A college student returns home for a weekend and gets roped into babysitting, too bad a masked figure has targeted the same home in the surprising and satisfying Night of the Reaper, premiering on Shudder on September 19.
Content warning for the movie: dog death.
The opening of Night of the Reaper is one of the best of recent years. It’s familiar: a babysitter in the 1980s has a night of terror as a masked villain (here, a grim reaper covering) interrupts her gig with a series of noises, calls, weird videos, and the like. Although Night of the Reaper is a serious film, not a satire, this scene sets a trope-aware, smart, and surprising feature. Writer-director Brandon Christensen (co-writing with brother Ryan) utilizes the tenets and expectations of the slasher genre, although the film is not a slasher per se, for a wonderfully designed and executed flick. That’s not a surprise; he previously directed the violent and effective Z (along with the underseen Still/Birth and Superhost), using the imaginary friend horror in new ways
The atmosphere set early on pays off as it progresses. The events of the opening set off the two simultaneous storylines. Deena is a college student returning for the weekend. After checking her old haunts, family, and friends, she ends up roped into a babysitting gig. There, she faces the killer, pulling the same tricks. But she’s not going to take shit from the killer. Deena, as played steadily by Jessica Clement of Dream Scenario, is a matter-of-fact, down-to-earth young woman. She may be freaked out as eerie things happen in the Sheriff’s secluded house, but she’s not going to scream, panic, and make bad decisions. I loved this version of a Final Girl, the calm control in a solid screen presence from Clement.
And where is the sheriff? All day, he’s been chasing strange clues around town. A series of boxes containing VHS tapes, notes, and other items is sending him on a strange scavenger hunt related to the opening scene and other deaths. Recently a widower, with the town’s violence hanging over his head, he’s barely hanging on. His deputies, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’s Matty Finochio and Final Destination 2’s Keegan Connor Tracy (also used in Z by Christensen), have to keep him in check from crossing the line in his grief and despair. Ryan Robbins ably plays him as a man on the edge of falling apart: He might be heading to uncouth methods, but he’s a good guy, just under pressure.
Both ends of the story are compelling and build upon one another, skillfully crafting a mystery and horror within the house and the town surrounding it. The characters within, there are only a few, are great to follow and watch as they solve their particular issues, personal and stabby. It all gets wonderfully “what the [insert your expletive here]” in several ways. Night of the Reaper doesn’t have much blood, but when it does, it’s an earned shock.
Where Night of the Reaper really hits is in the climax. Of course, I’ll keep the film’s secrets for your viewing, but how it all plays out: the whos, whats, and whys is incredibly satisfying and surprising. It’s the perfect culmination of the setups from the previous hour, pulling it all together with a crowd-pleasing gusto (it might be a bit of a stretch in a few ways, but forgivable).
But Night of the Reaper is put all together incredibly well across the board. It’s set in the 1980s, but it’s the brown, slightly sad, and drab 80s. A 1980s world, but the low-key, simmering, uncomfortable energy of 1970s horror (not unlike Ti West’s House of the Devil, which Christensen noted as an influence). The world is perfectly realized, never tipping its hand to modernity, using the era, especially in VHS tapes, as the perfect method. It’s not kitsch or nostalgia bait. Occasionally, the film stock goes soft or inserts artifacts to resemble our own VHS watches of the past, but it’s not overbearing and obvious, and is another way to create the unease. 
Much of this is from the fantastic cinematography of Clayton Moore. I often complain about filmmakers using unbelievably underlit set-ups (as recently as last week) to attempt to create a mood. But Night of the Reaper is a prime example of how to use it well, using limited lighting and deep darks to create atmosphere instead of annoyance. Everything we need to see is sharply contrasted. The look and camera placement have the film running at a simmer, engaging the viewer. There is a voyeuristic quality to how the camera is used, pulling in deeper. The beautifully realized camera use continues with impressively smooth transitions when the film switches storylines, building on the atmosphere and tension, creating a cohesion and conversation of the two halves instead of having to restart with a hard switch.
Night of the Reaper is a film that keeps the audience guessing, on the edge of their seats, thanks to the perfect symbiosis of the dual storylines, compelling characters, and simply being an effective, well-made, slick horror film. Top-notch production design, cinematography, and writing buoy the engaging story. Brandon Christensen has crafted a hell of a picture in Night of the Reaper, perfect for Shudder’s viewers upon release on the service on September 19th.