For more than a year now I’ve had a great swell of pity for “The Strangers.” Not the homicidal maniacs, the film about the homicidal maniacs. The original horror classic “The Strangers” and its underappreciated sequel “Prey at Night” have spawned a whole reboot trilogy — because nothing is too sacred (or, apparently, too soon) — and Renny Harlin shot all three at the same time. Then the first movie came out and it was all but universally reviled. I should know.
If you haven’t outsourced your memory and imagination to AI chatbots yet, let’s do a little exercise. Try to think back to the year 2001, when “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” came out. They’d just filmed three epic fantasy films, at once, and everything was riding on Peter Jackson’s first film to justify the effort. Fortunately for them it was a blockbuster pop culture event, but what if it wasn’t? What if it sucked? And what if they were still obligated to finish the other two movies, knowing that nobody wanted them to, or even cared?
That’s where we’re at with “The Strangers: Chapter 2.” It’s not so much a movie about a young woman running from masked murderers, it’s a movie about fulfilling a contract. Sure, the previous film made some money but even die-hard horror fans balked, and we’re an easy target. The first film remade Bryan Bertino’s original, about a couple trapped in a house with deadly, masked home invaders, and managed to flush the simplest story ever told down the septic tank. The pacing was so slow it wouldn’t have survived “The Long Walk” for five minutes. The protagonists were so bland that a single splash of Tabasco could have been a major improvement. And apparently they were both born without a survival instinct.
Sequel time: Maya (Madelaine Petsch) survived her encounter with The Strangers. Her boyfriend, not so much. So the Strangers are like, “Aw, man” and clock back in for some overtime, chasing Maya out of the hospital, into the woods, across town, and into a cliffhanger because, again, this is a trilogy, so we’re getting another one whether we want it or not. (Shout out to the person in my theater who saw the words “To Be Continued” and literally screamed in annoyance. I feel you, friend.)
What “The Strangers: Chapter 2” has that “Chapter 1” didn’t is semi-competent pacing. The whole movie is one long chase scene, so at least everyone’s running around instead of doing idle animations in a cabin for half the film. Also, Maya appears to have finally connected with a part of her brain that doesn’t want to die, so instead of sitting in empty rooms staring at open doors and hoping for the best, she’s constantly fleeing, hiding, and even successfully fighting back on more than one occasion. It may not be a good movie but at least it’s not as annoying the last one.
Renny Harlin, a filmmaker who absolutely can make better films than this, seems a lot more interested in chase movies than home invasions. Madelaine Petsch is a more engaging performer when she’s in survival mode than when she’s in nondescript love interest mode. Still, Harlin can’t seem to decide if Maya is the universe’s latest punching bag — a nigh-comical figure who’s having the worst day ever and eventually approaches each new threat and terrible stroke of luck with a “for crying out loud, what now” attitude — or a tragic victim. There’s a giant chasm situated between the “Evil Dead” movies and “The Last House on the Left,” and “The Strangers: Chapter 2” lives in that chasm.
“Chapter 2” also decides to reveal, for the first time, the origin of some the Strangers. Did you ever want to know more about the villains who were only scary because of their total anonymity? No? What if I told you their origin was that they were always creepy kids, and one of them used to have a doll that looked like their mask? No? What if after they did something in the present, we saw a flashback where one of the creepy kids said that someday they’d do the thing they just did? No? Me neither.
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There’s a horror scene in the middle of “The Strangers: Chapter 2” that appeared to have been ripped from a 1984 cult Australian horror movie, or possibly an Oscar-winning 2015 Western, and unlike the rest of the movie it’s unexpected and it kinda works. But the scares in the rest of the movie lack novelty and/or panache, and Harlin’s attempts to give the movie an air of mystery — by repeatedly shoving his camera so far into a townie’s face that you could give them a COVID test — aren’t tantalizing, they’re just socially awkward.
I repeat, “The Strangers: Chapter 2” is an improvement on “The Strangers: Chapter 1.” Then again, a moderate case of food poisoning is an improvement on a severe one. You don’t have to feel too bad for the filmmakers, since “Chapter 1” made a profit and the follow-ups are, from a financial perspective, probably nothing but net. So save your pity for the audience, who not only had to sit through these things, but now have to decide whether to live with their mistakes or navigate their local theater’s bureaucracy and get their money back.
“The Strangers: Chapter 2” is now playing in theaters.