Bet You Didn’t Know: Secrets Behind The Making Of “The Family That Preys”

The critics

As you know the critics, professional and amateur alike, don’t review Perry’s films very highly. Though they still felt there were holes critics, across the board, agreed that the film showed his growth. Here’s what one critic from the New York Daily News had this to say.

Perry’s notoriously overstuffed plots have sometimes been top-heavy, but this movie, like Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters, hangs on an elegant structure that doesn’t feel forced. Perry’s skills as a director have improved as his casts have gotten better, and he gives the lovely Woodard one of her most satisfying roles . . . By melding the pleasures of 1950s-style melodrama . . . with equal-gender, African-American-aimed plots, Perry has found success in a niche only he now occupies. And by adding Christian tenets and modern issues . . . Perry shows he knows what his audience wants. First and foremost, that’s a smart, satisfying movie experience, which Family is.