Director: Renny Harlin
Writer: Alan Freedland, Alan R. Cohen
Stars: Madelaine Petsch, Gabriel Basso, Richard Brake
Synopsis: Tethered by a frightening conclusion, Maya and the Strangers are locked on an unavoidable, unforgiving collision course — a showdown that proves they’re far from strangers now.
It’s hard to imagine back in 2008 that Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers would eventually culminate in a new trilogy of films where each entry is more mind-numbing than the last, but Renny Harlin’s Strangers trilogy is unfortunately a reality. The previous films of the trilogy have been bogged down by predictable plotlines, airless tension, and the blandest characters, but believe it or not, Chapter 3 doubles down in nearly every negative aspect throughout its runtime. There are barely any attempts at scares, tension is non-existent, and any attempts at further delving into the backstory of these characters are so laughable that it’s indistinguishable from a CW TV show. Even with the most thematically interesting concepts and character dynamics at play among the main cast, the film simply picks them up and drops them as it pleases, with no rhyme or reason to anything that occurs in the narrative. The Strangers: Chapter 3is such a failure of a finale for what was once a nerve racking franchise that you have no choice to wonder at the end of the road what the point of this trilogy was besides filling backstory that was meant to be empty in the first place; truly the most meaningless collection of films inflicted upon the cinematic landscape in some time.
After a quite literally unneeded cold open that doesn’t even have the decency of being clever in any aspect, Chapter 3 picks up right after 2’s conclusion, where Maya (Madelaine Petsch) killed the stranger known as Pin-Up girl. The Scarecrow stranger, introduced as Gregory in the previous film (Gabriel Basso), was in a relationship with a Pin-Up girl and mourns her loss before dispatching her as a loss within their plight. Gregory then begins his hunt for Maya throughout the tiny town of Venus, seeking her to take Pin-Up Girl’s place as a killer and, potentially, as a new lover. We also pick up with Sheriff Rotter (Richard Brake), whose shady activities within chapter 2 are finally unveiled here as an essential cog in the machine behind The Strangers’ seemingly random killings. With Maya’s sister persistent in finding her, she must try her best to survive the terror that awaits her throughout the night, as she looks to escape from the strangers and the town of Venus once and for all.
The insane predictability within every jumpscare, plot beat, and kill within Chapter 3 is nothing new within the standards of this monotonous trilogy, but what makes it exceedingly frustrating here is the actual small scrap of a decent idea thematically here and there. There’s a line or two near the film’s beginning that vaguely centers on the idea that religious cultism is part of the reason The Strangers do what they do. It certainly wouldn’t be groundbreaking, but it’s a shame the film does nothing with this and instead indulges in frivolous origin story plights.
As I mentioned in my previous review of Chapter 2, providing a backstory for the strangers basically ignores the whole reason they were scary in the first place: we didn’t know anything about them or why they decided to randomly kill people. This film literally opens its title card with an “eerie” message that defines the term “serial killer,” discusses how they’re normally strangers, and yet these films seem to do everything but make the strangers actually scary. The movie doesn’t even show much impact at all on the multiple axe swings and bloody dismemberments that occur despite its R rating.
It does help matters when the actual flashback and mystery elements surrounding everything happening in this town are either just made up on a whim or the most basic reveals ever as the film goes along. There exists no firm structure to any of the storytelling here, and the prequel nonsense the movie is so obsessed with explaining is just as boring as everything else that occurs in this shitty trilogy. Just when you think things can’t get even sadder, we reach the film’s climax, which definitely wants you to feel for these multiple characters we’ve spent our time with (especially Maya), and it’s impossible to muster even an ounce of care or really any emotion besides boredom. Madelaine Petsch tries her best to bring any sort of catharsis to anything happening on the screen, but at a point, she becomes just as wooden as the rest of the cast around her, who are done absolutely no favors by such a nothing conclusion to a trilogy that shouldn’t have been one film, much less three.
Now that the nightmares of this terrible Strangers trilogy have finally come to an end, in retrospect, despite Chapters 1 and 2 also being awful, I could at least somewhat see what they were attempting as singular films. Chapter 1 attempted to adopt the silent, unsettling nature of Bertino’s original film, which worked so well, and Chapter 2 tried its hand at an extended chase scene of thrills and tension, though it failed miserably. Chapter 3 was such a tedious mess of nonsense that I can’t even tell what its ultimate goal was besides mercifully ending things, and I suppose that just shows how thoroughly broken the central concept of these three films was from the very beginning.
Don’t be sad that The Strangers franchise is over, be happy……..that it’s FINALLY over.
