OUR pick of the latest releases

The Strangers: Prey At Night

(Cert 15, 84 mins)**

MARRIED couple Cindy (Christina Hendricks) and Mike (Martin Henderson) arrive at a trailer park under the cloak of darkness with their son Luke (Lewis Pullman) and belligerent teenage daughter Kinsey (Bailee Madison).

The parents hope to spend precious time with their children before Kinsey goes to boarding school.

"Now it will just be the three of you again," snarls the girl, "like it used to be."

Kinsey storms off and Luke hurriedly follows in the hope he can placate his sister.

Instead, the siblings stumble upon a horrific tableau of slaughter perpetrated by three costumed assailants: Dollface (Emma Bellomy), Man in the Mask (Damian Maffei) and Pin-Up (Lea Enslin).

Before the terrified children can raise the alarm, parents Cindy and Mike answer a knock at the door...

The Strangers: Prey At Night trundles relentlessly from one brutal skirmish to the next, stitching together set pieces with perfunctory scenes of family bonding.

Director Johannes Roberts's belated sequel makes no pretence at originality or invention.

Like all horror film bogeymen, the trio of merciless maniacs possess an astonishing ability to withstand every bone-crunching blow and petrol-soaked inferno that their terrified targets can dole out in the name of survival.

Hendricks and Henderson perfect their looks of stoicism in the face of certain death at the hands of psychopaths, who are roughly the same age as Kinsey and Luke.

The script penned by Ben Katai and Bryan Bertino, who wrote and directed the first film, is efficient but derivative, right down to a coda that strongly suggests the carnage won't end here.

I Feel Pretty

(Cert 12, 108 mins)**

RENEE BARRETT (Amy Schumer) works behind the scenes on a website for luxury cosmetics brand Lily LeClaire, which is run by chief executive Avery LeClaire (Michelle Williams) from the company's plush office on Fifth Avenue in New York.

By chance, a position for receptionist becomes vacant and Renee musters the courage to apply.

Shortly before her face-to-face interview with Avery, Renee hits her head during a spin cycle gym class and the sickening knock induces the applicant to see herself as magazine spread thin and beautiful.

To everyone else, she is the same Renee, except now she fizzes with self-confidence.

Consequently, Renee dazzles Avery, snags an adoring boyfriend called Ethan (Rory Scovel) and turns the head of Avery's handsome brother Grant (Tom Hopper).

I Feel Pretty is an ugly romantic comedy of female empowerment and body fascism, which mercilessly fat shames the central character and botches its central message about the exquisite beauty of imperfection.

Schumer has brilliantly lampooned issues of self-esteem, femininity and suffocating convention in her TV sketch show and the hilarious 2015 film Trainwreck.

Here she is at the mercy of writer-directors Marc Silverstein and Abby Kohn's script, which piles on misery and self-loathing in the opening hour until it becomes impossible to achieve redemption, even with Schumer working tirelessly to milk laughs.

The romance with Scovel is sweetly adorable but the script creates a minefield for the actors because Renee only accepts that she's beautiful after Ethan tells her she is.

She has to be validated by him, and by other people around her, and that isn't healthy.

The Innocents

(8 episodes)

WRITTEN and created by Hania Elkington and Simon Duric, this eight-part Netflix drama was shot on location primarily in the UK and puts a fantastical spin on Romeo & Juliet.

Harry (Percelle Ascott) falls deliriously in love with June (Sorcha Groundsell) and the teenagers fan the flames of their romance despite objections from their repressive families.

They eventually run away to start a life together only to make a shocking discovery: June possesses the ability to shape-shift.

At first, she struggles to control this incredible gift.

An enigmatic and slightly menacing professor called Halvorson (Guy Pearce) assures June that she is not alone and there are more shape-shifters at large in the world.

The professor promises to cure June but there is a secret war raging around the star-crossed lovers that will severely test their devotion to each other.

American Horror Story: Cult

(Cert 18, 550 mins)

THE seventh series of the award-winning horror anthology created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk arrives on the home formats, drawing creative inspiration from Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 US Presidential election.

In the Michigan town of Brookfield Heights, residents are deeply divided by a Republican president in the White House.

While Kai Anderson (Evan Peters) is delighted by the result, his estranged sister Winter (Billie Lourd) is devastated, along with local restaurateur Ally Mayfair-Richards (Sarah Paulson), who is plagued by a dizzying list of phobias.

Among these is coulrophobia - the crippling fear of clowns - and poor Ally is terrorised by visions of creepy circus performers.

Her distress negatively affects her wife Ivy (Alison Pill) and their son Oz (Cooper Dodson) so Ally turns to psychiatrist Dr Rudy Vincent (Cheyenne Jackson) for salvation.

The four-disc DVD and Blu-ray box sets include all 11 episodes.