Ask someone who has seen 2018’s The Strangers: Prey at Night for their reaction, and you tend to get one of two responses: “It’s an underrated ’80s-throwback slasher, and the pool scene is an all-timer”; or, “It’s a forgettable sequel that could never live up to the first movie … but that pool scene is undeniable.”
Reviews for the long-delayed sequel to 2008’s The Strangers were mixed to negative, but even the pans frequently singled out the scene, in which terrorized teenager Luke (Lewis Pullman) tussles with the film’s slasher villain Man in the Mask (Damian Maffei) around and inside a swimming pool. The scene begins with Luke walking into the pool area and discovering that he’s locked in. As he starts to panic, multicolored neon palm trees spring to life along with overhead…
