Director: Renny Harlin
Writers: Alan Freedland, Alan R. Cohen, Amber Loutfi
Stars: Madelaine Petsch, Richard Brake, Rachel Shenton
Synopsis: After learning that one of their victims, Maya, is still alive, the three masked maniacs return to finish the job. With nowhere to run and no one to trust, Maya soon finds herself in a brutal fight for survival against psychopaths who are more than willing to kill anyone who stands in their way.
When describing a film as totally worthless, it really just needs to be devoid of any meaning, a movie that simultaneously manages to be completely baffling with how haphazard it is, while simultaneously ending up completely monotonous to sit through, no matter the runtime. Think of what worthlessness means in film; aside from a few other instances, I can’t think of any better example than the recent 2 of 3 planned chapters in the new Strangers trilogy. The Strangers: Chapter 1 was already a shoddy copy-and-paste job of the original 2008 film, but somehow, despite finally veering into a different direction, The Strangers: Chapter 2 is an even more pathetic attempt at a fresh take on the franchise. The entirety of the film is straight up the most “nothing” experience I’ve had with any movie this year, plagued with creatively bankrupt chase sequences, meaningless flashbacks that couldn’t feel more disconnected, and an ending tease so laughable you’ll roll your eyes into the back of your skull. Anything meaningful in the film has been executed infinitely better within this franchise, let alone the horror genre, as the film just plods around padding out runtime until it reaches 90 minutes; The Strangers: Chapter 2 truly is the definition of a prodigiously empty experience.
After a series of recap flashbacks, Chapter 2 starts with Maya (Madelaine Petsch), the sole survivor of the attack from the first chapter. She’s hospitalized and still reeling over the loss of her fiancé at the hands of the three masked individuals known as The Strangers. As Maya comes to her bearings and Sheriff Rotter (Richard Brake) begins the hunt for these masked killers, The Strangers, of course, come back to finish what they started and kill Maya. What follows is essentially a 90-minute-long chase sequence through hospitals, roads, and even the forest, as Maya begins a battle of survival against these masked figures. Conceptually, a movie fully acting as an entire chase scene full of suspenseful setups isn’t a bad concept, especially when you have a performer as committed as Petsch is within the film as really the movie’s singular positive element; the problem, however, lies in the lack of anything innovative or remotely scary on every front. Every jumpscare, move with the camera, or kill couldn’t be more lacking. For something that’s R-rated, there is absolutely no teeth to be found in any kills the film more than anything cuts away from the violence we’d like to see rather than opting for any stylistic flare.
While the film is in this mode, more often than not, absolutely nothing of substance is happening on the screen. The movie just repeats these tired beats of absolutely contrived nothingness until we reach an apex of it within a scene so incredibly baffling that it will leave most watching in unintended laughter. Director Renny Harlin isn’t completely void of talent, so the absolute lifelessness happening every minute on screen is completely bewildering.
Even with all these issues, the defining death knell for this second chapter is their attempt at a backstory for The Strangers. Almost anyone who enjoyed those first two films, back in 2008 and 2018, respectively, could tell you that the reason why The Strangers felt so eerie was because we knew very little about them. These three masked individuals murder just because they want to make so much more of a terrifying presence, even if the films they reside in are not groundbreaking, so trying to give them a motive or origin story isn’t just unnecessary, but it quite literally misses the entire point of the existence of this franchise. On top of it all, the backstory itself is the most stupid explanation for things like “Is Tamara Here?” or The Stranger’s little creepy smiley-faced art imaginable; it’s all completely useless.
I haven’t walked out of a movie theater as fast as I did with The Strangers: Chapter 2 in a long while. It’s an absolutely airless film that serves no useful function as an addition to the franchise or the horror genre in general. This second chapter doesn’t even feel like a movie, just 90 minutes of predictable chases and random occurrences that go nowhere, leading to an unsatisfying experience that ultimately results in the most ‘nothing’ you will have with a film this year.
