Fear the Night is a 2023 American home invasion action thriller about a female war veteran fighting back against a group of home invaders.
Written and directed by Neil LaBute (House of Darkness; Out of the Blue; Dirty Weekend; Some Velvet Morning; Death at a Funeral; The Wicker Man; The Shape of Things; Possession 2002; Nurse Betty; In the Company of Men). Produced by Eric Brenner, Larry Greenberg, Lucas Jarach, Berry Meyerowitz and Jeff Sackman.
The movie stars Maggie Q (The Protégé; Death of Me; Slumber; Priest), Travis Hammer, Kat Foster, James Carpinello, Highdee Kuan, Ito Aghayere and Gia Crovatin.
Plot:
Eight women attend a bachelorette party at a remote farmhouse in the California hills. They are interrupted by the arrival of masked intruders who surround the place and begin shooting arrows at the home and the guests.
One partygoer—Tess (Maggie Q), a military veteran who is fighting her addictions and her difficulty fitting in with other people—leads the women in making a stand against the attackers as they fight back in an effort to save themselves over the course of a single dark night…
Reviews:
“Fear the Night isn’t a bloodbath, but LaBute gets suspense going with Tess’s hunt for answers, and he handles B-movie tradition by keeping Perry a reprehensible antagonist with a singular goal, willing to kill everyone to achieve it. That the victims are female only sweetens the deal for the villain. LaBute captures a reasonable amount of tension and he remains talkative, even adding a denouement that keeps with the theme of unhelpful men.” 3.5 out of 5, Blu-ray.com
“It is nice to see a veteran as the film’s focal character, but LaBute also sort of gives us a vet bad guy as well, so that credit doesn’t go very far. The execution is competent, but it needed more edge, which is a strange thing to say about a LaBute film. Fear the Night is just okay…” J.B. Spins
“With Fear the Night, LaBute clearly aims to push viewers’ buttons, especially using the oft-repeated threat of sexual violence. Some dramatic irony mildly re-casts the movie’s otherwise formulaic conflict in a harsher light, but not much gets complicated by this extra knowledge, especially not LaBute’s tin-eared dialogue nor his indifferent direction.” RogerEbert.com
“Neil LaBute stages this all with a nice efficiency and a fair amount of tension as the characters are forced to make some hard choices in the name of survival. The violence, while not overly gory is convincingly staged and rendered with sound designer Lawrence He’s (The Standoff at Sparrow Creek, The Price We Pay) work making up for what the darkness of Rogier Stoffers (Death Wish, School of Rock) natural light cinematography hides.” 3 out of 5, Voices from the Balcony
YouTube reviews:
Release date:
In the US, Fear the Night was released theatrically in select locations and On-Demand (VOD) on July 21, 2023.
Trailer:
Filming locations:
Santa Clarita, California
More Neil LaBute movies:
HOUSE OF DARKNESS (2022) 14 reviews of Kate Bosworth and Justin Long comedic horror
OUT OF THE BLUE (2022) Reviews of seduction and murder thriller
More Maggie Q movies:
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