Again in 2008, as horror was leaning into torture porn and located footage, The Strangers got here together with a quietly haunting premise that took its time and left the viewers genuinely unsettled, regardless of its simplicity. The concept of a gaggle of masked killers tormenting a pair just because they have been dwelling was unnerving and hit on very actual fears that somebody is perhaps creeping within the shadows, ready to assault — and to make it even worse, only for the hell of it. The Strangers was a breath of contemporary air at a time when the style was making an attempt to gross out the viewers as a lot as potential.
Final 12 months, Renny Harlin, director of such movies as Die Arduous 2, Deep Blue Sea, and infamous flop Cutthroat Island, launched the primary of a deliberate trilogy reboot with The Strangers: Chapter 1. With Chapter 1, Harlin managed to primarily make a worse model of The Strangers, turning it right into a brainless slasher with no rigidity and with out the underlying dread that made the unique movie work in addition to it did. To place it mildly, this reboot trilogy was off to a nasty begin. But Harlin has in some way sunk to a brand new low for this franchise with The Strangers: Chapter 2, a movie that could be a full miscalculation of what made these films terrifying and attention-grabbing within the first place.
What Is ‘The Strangers: Chapter 2’ About?
From the very opening, The Strangers: Chapter 2 doesn’t make sense. The movie opens with a statistic about what number of murders are random acts of violence dedicated in the direction of strangers. However after Chapter 1, Maya (Madelaine Petsch) is not any stranger to the masked man and two masked feminine accomplices who killed her fiancé, Ryan (Froy Gutierrez), in entrance of her and left her for lifeless. In reality, after information breaks on the native diner by Sheriff Rotter (Richard Brake) that Maya continues to be alive and within the hospital, it doesn’t take lengthy earlier than this trio of masked murderers is searching Maya down to complete the job.
Over the longest 98 minutes you’ve ever felt, Maya escapes the clutches of those three time and again, sometimes discovering somebody she believes she will be able to belief to assist her, solely to have them both killed by the murderers or suspected by Maya of really being the killers. As Maya tries to make her method to security, nobody will speak or act like an actual human being; each resolution is sort of impressively silly, and also you’ll query greater than as soon as how this story has been stretched to the obscene level that it needed to be instructed over the course of three movies.
‘The Strangers: Chapter 2’ Doesn’t Perceive What Made the Authentic So Compelling
Harlin and writers Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland — who additionally wrote Chapter 1, and unusually, co-wrote the Robert Downey Jr./Zach Galifianakis highway comedy Due Date — appear to have checked out The Strangers and stated, “Hey, what if we remade this, however torpedoed something that labored?” Proper out the gate, Chapter 2 is now not an act of random violence; it’s a direct try to search out Maya, a free finish that they should clear up. In that authentic movie, the trio of murderers felt like flesh-and-blood maniacs who performed by the foundations of logic and time. As with Chapter 1, this second chapter turns them into your fundamental, boring film serial killer, who can pop up at any time, but nonetheless typically manages to make the dumbest selections at any time when they’re comparatively near our protagonist.
OK, however what concerning the sense of dread, you would possibly ask? Naturally, it’s nonexistent right here. Harlin appears to suppose that making this story laboriously sluggish is similar as steadily building tension. Scenes go on for far too lengthy, and principally equate to Maya taking her time to discover a hiding spot, a killer is available in, and on the worst potential time, she makes the slightest noise. The killer then will get distracted, strikes on, and this all performs out over and over. It’s as if Harlin, Cohen, and Freedland have been conscious that the best a part of Chapter 1 was the tense crawlspace sequence, wherein Maya needed to be quiet after by accident getting a nail by her hand whereas crawling, so that they determined to constantly recreate that second with none of the thrill or concern. Chapter 2 doesn’t put you on edge, but it surely does suppose if it dully plods by each scene, it’ll have the identical impression — unhealthy information: it truly has the other impact.
But you would possibly ask, certainly, the anonymity of those killers causes some pleasure, proper? Particularly since Maya meets characters who may doubtlessly be the killers?? Completely not, no. The characters Maya meets are both too clearly not the killers, or they’re so ridiculously over-the-top (as we see with the wildly exaggerated efficiency by former J.D. Vance, Gabriel Basso). Much more ludicrous is that Chapter 2 decides that what this trio of killers actually wants is an origin story, as we reduce to their childhood. Once more, if a part of the inherent terror of The Strangers is that they might be anybody attacking for no purpose, explaining who they’re fully negates that.
By some means, ‘Chapter 1’ Is Even Worse Than ‘The Strangers: Chapter 1’
It’s additionally wild how out of his depth Harlin is as a horror director right here. In a single scene, Maya has to sew up her wounds which have opened again up after working like a maniac from each killers and folks making an attempt to assist her. This needs to be a layup for Harlin; folks having to sew themselves in films is a straightforward method to make audiences cringe of their seats. But in some way, he even messes that up, because the scene makes the stitching arduous to see, even blocking it with Maya’s hand at one level. Numerous different movies have executed this scene effectively — it does not take a lot to make a second like this uncomfortable — however Harlin can’t even make that work.
Cohen and Freedland’s script is usually laughable in how absurd this story performs out. Each selection that’s made is a nasty one, each second is interminable, and there’s completely no concern or curiosity as to who these killers are. Not since Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy has one story felt so stretched out over three movies in a means that felt fully pointless. When the movie tries to summarize the occasions of the primary movie, it solely takes a number of fast sentences, in case you want proof of how little occurs in these movies. However no less than with Chapter 1, they may fall again on retelling the story of 2008’s The Strangers. Right here, they’re fully unmoored when having to provide you with their very own story on this universe. At one level, Chapter 2 feels the necessity to introduce a big wild boar to terrorize Maya. And if that’s not unhealthy sufficient, we even get a flashback to the boar’s origin. It’s as if Chapter 2 is throwing all the things on the wall to see what works, aside from, you understand, taking part in to what made the primary movie a stable horror.
On the very very least, Madelaine Petsch is doing the perfect she will be able to with a particularly weak script and a director who can’t deal with horror. She provides an efficient efficiency that performs into the strain of the scene and reveals us the emotion that we ought to be feeling whereas watching the movie. If the film may match the phobia that Petsch is presenting right here, this trilogy would stand an opportunity.
However The Strangers: Chapter 2 is an exhausting bastardization of the place this story started in 2008. Nobody appears to recollect why The Strangers labored, and as an alternative, tries to water this idea down with horrible pacing, villain (and boar) origins, and very silly selections made at each flip. It’s a disgrace all three of the movies on this trilogy have been filmed collectively, as at this level, it might be arduous to think about how Chapter 3 may proper this sinking ship. The Strangers: Chapter 2 is a real catastrophe, one of many worst horror movies of the 12 months, and it’s a rattling disgrace that is what this franchise has come to.
The Strangers: Chapter 2 is now taking part in in theaters.
- Launch Date
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September 26, 2025
- Runtime
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96 Minutes
- Director
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Renny Harlin
- Writers
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Alan Freedland, Alan R. Cohen, Amber Loutfi
- Producers
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Courtney Solomon
- Sequel(s)
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The Strangers: Chapter 3 (2025)
- Franchise(s)
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The Strangers
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Richard Brake
Sheriff Rotter
- Madelaine Petsch does what she will be able to to make the horror of this expertise palpable.
- The Strangers: Chapter 2 is a mishandling of all the things that made the 2008 authentic worthwhile.
- Each character and each selection they make is really ludicrous.
- Chapter 2 has no concept methods to construct rigidity.
- The choice to present the villains a backstory is appalling dumb.
