The Strangers: Chapter 2 Breaks The Horror Series' Biggest Rule In The Most Boring Way
This article contains spoilers for "The Strangers: Chapter 2."
In the final moments of Bryan Bertino's "The Strangers," the titular killers reveal their motive in four simple words: because you were home. It's basically if the random psychological torture of Michael Haneke's "Funny Games" were presented as a bleak denouement. The highly underrated sequel "Prey at Night" not only didn't give the three masked strangers a backstory, it ended with their deaths as the natural culmination of them simply being people. When director Renny Harlin announced that his reboot of the slasher franchise would be a trilogy of films that explored the Strangers' origins, it immediately demolished the series' trademark concept.
"The Strangers: Chapter 1," however, doesn't even have the distinction of being its own thing. It's largely an inert and tensionless beat-for-beat remake of the '08 film with a terribly generic couple at the center. There are no real revelations pertaining to the Strangers' motives or identities, so much as a whole lot of shady townsfolk in the first third who could potentially be Scarecrow, Pin-Up Girl, or Dollface. "Chapter 2" was always going to be a marginal improvement by way of it being in unexplored territory. It picks up right from where "Chapter 1" left off, with Madelaine Petsch's Maya waking up in the hospital after surviving the home invasion that ended in the death of her fiancée Ryan (Froy Gutierrez).
/Film's Rafael Motamayor panned "Chapter 2" as an uninspiring survival horror, and he's being kind. It's a feat to make a feature-length chase movie that opens with an extended homage to Rick Rosenthal's "Halloween II" this listless and plodding. To make matters worse, the revelations that are made pertaining to the Strangers' origins are a bafflingly silly development that goes all the way back to their childhood.
The Strangers: Chapter 2 gives the titular killers - and Tamara - a deeply silly partial backstory
"Chapter 2" opens with the revelation that Shelly (Ema Horvath), the waitress from the previous film, was the Pin-Up Girl who knocked on Maya and Ryan's AirBnB asking whether Tamara was home. The name never meant anything other than a signifier to see whether the house was occupied with potential victims. In this film, however, we learn through a series of oddly placed flashbacks that not only is Tamara a real person, but the catalyst for the entire thing, at least from what we've seen so far.
Twenty years prior, a young Shelly/Pin-Up (Nola Wallace) was shown to be an outcast among her peers, albeit with one exception. Her friend (Jake Cogman) is never given a name, but is heavily implied to be Gregory (Gabriel Basso), otherwise known as the kid who would become Scarecrow. Whenever he spends time with a local girl named Tamara (Pippa Blaylock), it makes Shelly jealous to the point where she hijacks their game on the playground. Young Scarecrow knocks, asks if Tamara is home, kisses her, and then leaves. Shelly follows the first few steps, then bashes Tamara to death with a rock. Young Scarecrow isn't deterred by her violent actions, so much as he is intrigued. He even makes the Strangers' smiley face in the pool of blood while holding Shelly's hand.
After all of that, "Chapter 2" ends with adult Scarecrow mourning the death of Pin-Up Girl in the road after Maya gets the drop on her in the ambulance, and it's deeply stupid. It wouldn't surprise me to learn these scenes were the results of the reshoots Harlin undertook as a result of the negative reception of "Chapter 1." The Strangers being born out of playground jealousy feels like something that would come out of a parody, yet is played completely straight here.
The Strangers: Chapter 2 is way too self-serious to have any fun with its deviations
The middle chapter partially lets the cat out of the bag by imbuing the Strangers with an origin story that goes against the killers' arbitrary nature in the most boring way. I've been in the "Saw" trenches for most of my life so I'm used to ridiculous retcons in horror sequels. Where those films expanded the story by way of convoluted soap opera plotting, Harlin's "Strangers" movies hardly feel like they've made any traction. In a better movie, Pin-Up Girl being killed by Maya as a retribution for her direct part in Ryan's death would make for an interesting parallel, but it's so deathly serious that the sequel bait isn't even any fun.
"Chapter 2's" ending indicates a larger conspiracy given the backwoods town of Venus, Oregon is complicit in the Strangers' murder sprees in some form. There's also a potential thread about the killers being part of a cult. Two religious children make a brief appearance in "Chapter 1," but not "Chapter 2." In lieu of their absence here is this cultish sermon being broadcast on the radio, yet never expanded upon, which leads me to believe that it will be brought back in "Chapter 3." Dollface has yet to be revealed, but the potential lineup is stacked with such instantly forgettable performances that it doesn't really matter, and that's damning considering the narrative deviation.
I have no doubt Harlin will bring this story to some sort of a conclusion with "Chapter 3," but that's not much of a compliment. Endings, after all, can recontextualize everything that came before. But if it takes until the final entry in a trilogy to be "the good one," then it shows a critical design flaw in the whole enterprise.
"The Strangers: Chapter 2" is now playing in theaters nationwide.