The Strangers: Chapter 2

Renny Harlin’s shoddy 2024 offering, The Strangers: Chapter 1, was essentially a remake of Bryan Bertino’s super-suspenseful 2008 home-invasion chiller The Strangers, in which a couple are tormented by a trio of — you guessed it — strangers. But there was a catch: Harlin in fact shot three back-to-back movies from a 260-page script, and promoted Chapter 1 with the promise/threat that Chapters 2 and 3 would widen his largely one-location horror movie across America while unmasking the reasons behind this ostensibly random violence.

Well, this second instalment is sprinkled with flashbacks, the filmmakers seemingly having not seen Rob Zombie’s Halloween or Texas Chainsaw prequel Leatherface: The Beginning, or they’d know that a trite backstory of childhood trauma only divests your masked killer(s) of menace. The horror movies they have seen, clearly, are all from the ’80s: Halloween II (much stalking in a bizarrely unoccupied hospital); A Nightmare On Elm Street (scary boiler room); and The Shining (bathroom door axed). Is Harlin paying homage to favourites, or simply devoid of fresh ideas? It’s hard to say, but there’s even a bizarre interlude in which Maya (Madelaine Petsch) is attacked by a rampaging CGI boar that is full-on Razorback.

Originality, then, is in short supply, and the storytelling makes hardly a lick of sense as Maya flees from the home-invasion subgenre into slasher and survival horror territory. She takes to the misty forest to escape her pursuers, but they transpire to be skilled trackers, popping up from behind every tree. They’re certainly better at tailing than they are at killing, for it’s their ineptitude as much as Maya’s resourcefulness that allows for escape after escape.

What saves The Strangers: Chapter 2 from one-star ignominy is Harlin’s ability to frame the odd eye-catching shot and to mount a half-decent jump scare. Petsch also gives a committed, largely wordless performance, navigating Final Girl territory for an entire movie.