EXCLUSIVE: Later this week will see the release of The Strangers: Prey at Night, the sequel to the 2008 film, The Strangers. While the connective tissue between the two films seems minimal at best, the idea of a masked home invasion is certainly enough to recreate some of the same horrors of that first one.

Taking the helm of this project is none other than 47 Meters Down director Johanne Roberts. Our own Gig Patta had a chance to sit down with the director in a video interview (which will be up later this week — seriously, watch this one), and in it, Gig asked what made him decide to go from an ocean film like 47 Meters Down to something this drastically different. Roberts said:

“I just finished 47, which had been a very tough movie to do. The producers passed me the script to this and said, “Are you interested?” I was a big fan of the first one. I was very unsure about tackling it because it’s a sequel, but it’s been 10 years. There was a whole minefield there that I was very nervous about getting into. I read the script, and I liked the script, and I really saw — I’m a massive John Carpenter fan — and I really saw the potential to make the Carpenter movie I wanted to make.”

Ah, yes. The wonderful John Carpenter has been an inspiration to countless filmmakers, and it’s great to see that influence continues on to this day. Given the narrative strengths of that first Halloween film, I can see the resemblance between something like that and The Strangers: Prey at Night.

Watch out for our full video interview later this week.

The Strangers: Prey at Night hits theaters this Friday on March 9, 2018.

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