The Strangers - Chapter 2 Is A Tortured Horror Sequel That Tarnishes The Original
You’ll want to stay home for this one.
Back in 2022, Finnish filmmaker Renny Harlin shot a brand new The Strangers trilogy all at once. The first, an outright remake, ended up being everything Bryan Bertino's infinitely more horrifying original is not. At the time, I pondered how Lionsgate's experiment could get any worse. Now that I've seen The Strangers - Chapter 2, I have my answers.
Frankly, Harlin's second take is a futile and stupid gesture. It provides us with everything we never needed to know about "The Strangers," in addition to adding random nonsense that doesn't fit. By rationalizing the irrational, all the horror has vanished. Writers Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland misunderstand everything about the devastating ambiguity at the core of Bertino's themes. Instead, we’re met with this inane need to provide a backstory that betrays the very meaning of The Strangers.
In Harlin’s first continuation, Madelaine Petsch's Maya Lucas regains consciousness in a local Venus, Oregon hospital. She's survived a deadly attack by masked home invaders, unlike her fiancé. But, as Maya learns, her nightmare is far from over. Before long, the three masked assailants who ruined her life are chasing her again, with Venus' locals unable to help — or, perhaps, they’re staying away by choice. There's something strange happening in the community, from the same Jesus-praising radio station they all enjoy, to a smiley face tattoo seen on necks. If Maya can outsmart her attackers, maybe she'll uncover the truth.
It's maddening, really. The Strangers has become a defining 2000s horror staple due to its diabolically bleak tone. "Because you were home" is a calling card for true evil. The Strangers - Chapter 2, on the other hand, is one of the most painfully generic and unnecessary horror origin stories in at least a decade. Cohen and Freedland try to explain every piddly detail in The Strangers, from the chilling opener, "Is Tamara home," to the statistic that some 1,670 people are murdered by strangers every year (thanks, random text card). With every new backstory reveal, Harlin's The Strangers trilogy becomes even more toothless. You can almost forgive the sins of a forgettable remake after realizing how astonishingly this continuation misses the entire point of The Strangers.
To be fair, Madelaine Petsch is innocent. Maya is caught in the middle of a town-wide hunt, and she's just trying to survive. Petsch's performance is that of an exhausted, wounded final girl who spends this entire movie fleeing from Dollface, Pin-Up Girl, and Scarecrow … again. She's failed not by her talents, but the situations her character finds herself navigating. By the standards set forth by countless slasher protagonists, Maya is a perfectly apt character stuck in dire circumstances. Frankly, Petsch is giving her all, but she deserves better.
Petsch gives her all, but is underserved by the relentlessy stupid narrative.
Elsewhere, disaster keeps striking. Harlin's direction struggles with continuity, as edits haphazardly stitch together shots that don't make logistical sense (for example, how can Maya so easily leap from the middle back seat of an SUV when crunched between two large men?). Or, why is a drawn-out wild boar attack scene granted prominence in a movie that's supposedly inspired by terrifying break-ins and random acts of violence? The Strangers - Chapter 2 is a parade of baffling decisions, especially as Harlin overuses genre tropes until they're rendered impotent. If you drank every time Maya was given an escape chance only for Harlin to meanly rip said hope away seconds later, you'd be blackout drunk halfway in. It's a cheap trick that becomes a dumb joke, much like the trilogy's initial intentions.
The only saving grace is a few spots of practical bloodshed effects, as Maya stumbles upon gored corpses. The Strangers - Chapter 2 transitions from a prolonged torture flick to a body count slasher, which ramps up the action (if that's your speed). But even then, Harlin tarnishes goodwill by using laughably awful CG blood in other spots. In the film's pivotal climactic flashback, where "Is Tamara home" is assigned actual meaning, digital SFX are an eyesore. It's your moment of truth, the big twist, and all you can muster is a ketchup-looking puddle that shines like outdated computer game graphics? Not to mention how the explanation no one asked for could be one of the most misguided and damaging retellings this sequel attempts.
The Strangers - Chapter 2 is a worst-case scenario for a horror sequel to a subpar remake. It's so bad, there's a legitimate fear that its inefficiencies could retroactively tarnish the original's reputation. Harlin's vision for these three chapters whiffs on everything that horror fans love about Bertino's The Strangers, which only becomes more evident in this second release. The scares have evaporated, issues stack like corpses, and scriptwork misses every mark imaginable. It's not even especially shocking, given how it's plain as day where Chapter 3 is headed. Like I said before, a futile and stupid gesture.
