"Fear the Night" gives Maggie Q stuff to do, and that's neat

Fear the Night (2023)

There’s no stopping writer-director Neil LaBute (2022’s “House of Darkness”) from his men-being-cruel-to-women thesis (or his reputation for being a misogynist). In his pure exploitation thriller “Fear the Night” (a most generic title that doesn’t really represent it correctly), he does, however, decidedly seem to be on the side of the opposite sex. Primal, suspenseful, and preparative, the film does what it sets out to do without meaning to say anything or be more than a serviceable kill-to-survive thriller. It’s not on the level of “Straw Dogs,” “You’re Next,” “Green Room,” or either one of the “Becky” movies, but it’s just really neat to see Maggie Q be a badass. 

“I’m like Mr. Miyagi with tits,” quips Maggie Q’s character Tess, an Iraq war vet and lone wolf. Six months into her sobriety, Tess seems to be at odds with everyone, especially her squabbling sister Beth (Kat Foster), but not her baby sister Rose (Highdee Khan), a bride-to-be. Before their parents’ farmhouse in the middle of the desert gets handed over to a new owner, the ladies decide to throw Rose a bachelorette party with five of her girlfriends. All of a sudden as the party gets ramped up, an arrow strikes, and panic quickly sets in. Masked men want something inside the house. Tess and Beth don’t think they have anything valuable that would be worth killing for, but the picking-off one by one commences anyway. Being a decisive and resourceful survivalist in nature, Tess is clearly someone to have in your corner.

“Fear the Night” traces over a lot of other home-invasion movies with a paint-by-numbers setup, but an unflappable Maggie Q and Neil Labute’s sturdy direction make this nasty piece of work very watchable. Surprisingly less nihilistic than LaBute’s oeuvre, there’s still not much time spent getting to know these women as fuller characters (Gia Crovatin might get a little more than most as Mia), although there is a spiky, snappy back-and-forth between Q’s Tess and Kat Foster’s Beth. As if LaBute is apologizing for being accused of hating women, nearly every man is either a leering creep, a money-hungry psycho, an idiotic rapist, or an old, condescending sheriff who doesn’t believe women. The ladies’ chef/stripper (KeiLyn Durrel Jones) is the one harmless, trustworthy exception. 

The reason these men want inside is dumb, and the digital time-check intertitles are superfluous. It also seems like a miscalculation that one of the earliest victims is completely forgotten about and never talked about again. Even with those flaws, “Fear the Night” is effective when it’s a blunt instrument that cuts to the bone. The takeaway isn’t as intensely cathartic as it could have been, but when delivering the satisfying brutalities, this is proof that the right action vehicle just needs to find Maggie Q more often. “Fear the Night” is taut and entertaining enough that it gets the job done.

Grade: B -

Quiver Distribution is releasing “Fear the Night” (92 min.) in theaters, on digital and on demand on July 21, 2023.