The After Dark films have been hit or miss since they first began. A collection of films usually made by first timers they range from movies that offer truly innovative ideas and scares to movies that seem to take forever to unwind. Most seem to fall in the middle. But PROWL (aka THE STRAYS) leans to the poor side of the scale.
Amber (Courtney Hope) hates the small town she lives in. She dreams of the day when she can escape to the big city and find a life of her own. The chance presents itself with an apartment for rent in Chicago. The catch is that she has to make it there by the next day with the first and last month’s rent or the landlord will let it go to someone else.
This calls for a road trip! Except that all of her friends have either had their wheels grounded or in the shop for repairs. Except one. Off they go! But that doesn’t work out either as the van overheats and ends up on the side of the road. Luckily a truck driver comes along that they eventually talk into taking them to Chicago where he says he’s heading. Into the back of the truck they hop and off they go.
But they later realize that this driver was anything but a savior. Instead they find he’s driven them to some hidden location, an abandoned factory of sorts, and left them there. When the back of the truck opens, they gather their things, click on a flashlight and start looking for a way out. Until one of them is pulled up from the floor in the dark and his head dropped seconds later.
The driver has dropped them off in a feeding ground for a group of vampires. He was hauling a load of plasma for them in the back of the truck, but fresh prey is so much better. One by one the group is taken, rather quickly too for an 84 minute film. Amber and her best friend overhear the leader of the group talking and continue to evade their pursuers. But that doesn’t last long as her friend is taken and now Amber is forced to fend for herself.
The twist in the story then presents itself (don’t worry I won’t tell you what it is) but it just feels out of place and tacked on even though it’s been hinted at (poorly) from the start. The ending doesn’t feel like an end but doesn’t feel like it leaves an opening for a sequel either. And let’s hope one doesn’t get made because this movie was boring.
Sure horror films are supposed to have jump scenes but there are few of them to be found and when they do they’re at times when you pretty much expect them to happen. The acting is sub-par and does little to convince you these are real people, worst of all Courtney Hope in the lead. You don’t care about anyone before they get slaughtered and you sure don’t care about them after.
Shot mostly in darkness (I guess because of a low budget) with a soundtrack that goes from wanting to get closer to hear what’s being said to being blasted out of your seat, the movie offers nothing that would make me seek out anything made by this director or writer in the future. A good horror film offers you something scary, something original, something a bit different and this film offered none of those things. I take part of that back. It does offer something original in the suddenly tossed out explanation but its nothing that’s the least bit interesting. Perhaps in the hands of a better writer it might have but here it just seems added on. As much as I love scary movies, this one is best left unrented.
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