THE STRANGERS: CHAPTER 1 - Mark Reviews Movies

The Strangers: Chapter 1, Lionsgate

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 16, 2024

If you've seen The Strangers, there's little reason to partake in The Strangers: Chapter 1, which is more a reboot of the series than a prequel to its predecessors—and more a remake of the original movie than anything different. There's a lot wrong with whatever this installment is, but the lingering sense of déjà vu is certainly near the top of the list.

Once again, a couple in a remote house are vaguely terrorized by a trio of masked stalkers, until the third act decides that actions amounting to some creepy pranks probably aren't enough of a threat for the characters. Like the 2008 movie, the overt cruelty of this one more or less comes out of nowhere on a narrative level, apart from a prologue that shows the masked threesome killing a random character.

That gives away the game for anyone who has somehow found themselves watching this third installment without having seen either of the previous movies. Any possible surprise, then, is potentially ruined twice—by one's knowledge of the original and by the movie's own doing. Where are the genuine sense of surprise and the intentional acts of subverting the established formula accomplished by The Strangers: Prey at Night when you need them?

Anyway, the soon-to-be-intimated characters are Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and Ryan (Froy Gutierrez), who are on a road trip to Portland. Making a random exit on the expressway for some food, the two find themselves in a small town, filled with so many suspicious residents that, if this were a murder mystery, the local diner alone would be filled with possible suspects and likely red herrings. Since this is the first entry in a planned trilogy (Yes, this one ends with an entirely anticlimactic "to be continued"), maybe that is the path the larger narrative of these movies will take.

That's irrelevant speculation at this point. Even so, it's a bit more intriguing than witnessing screenwriters Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland essentially repeat the beats of the first movie, as director Renny Harlin pulls out the usual horror tricks. Everything in the plotting, the staging, and the clean, polished look of the movie goes against the notion of generating suspense.

The protagonists, two of the dumber participants in a horror story in recent memory (That's saying a lot), demolish whatever prospective tension might remain. They end up in an isolated cabin in the woods when their car mysteriously stops working after eating at the diner. Ryan has a suspect in mind: Rudy (Ben Cartwright), the owner of the neighboring auto garage. Maya thinks it's just an unfortunate coincidence, and again, the answer to that little puzzle is apparently for one of the forthcoming sequels—or not at all, for the little thought the script gives to explaining anything about who the killers may be.

As for the rest of the plot, it's predictable even without any prior knowledge of how the first movie functioned. Someone knocks on the cabin door in the middle of the night, asking if a particular someone is home, and as the visits continue, Maya and Ryan start hearing sounds outside. This is the perfect time for Ryan to leave the house, since he has to retrieve his inhaler from the car. He might as well, apparently, stop for some dinner, too, while his girlfriend is alone in a creepy cabin in the middle of nowhere, where a stranger keeps knocking and someone or something keeps making noises.

As for Maya, she keeps hearing those sounds, most of them now coming from inside the house, so this, obviously, is the perfect time for her smoke weed and take a shower. To be fair, she does have the apparent misfortune of not being able to turn her head or body whenever one of the strangers is right behind her or just a bit to the side. There must be some medical term for this particular affliction of characters in a horror movie, but we'll just call it bad writing and unconvincing staging until someone figures out the proper nomenclature. Ryan has this condition, too, as proven by a scene where one of the strangers has seemingly predicted where the two would enter a pitch-dark room and stands right behind the spot.

There's really too much of this stupidity to list in The Strangers: Chapter 1, although one character going from trigger-happy (in the case of a different type of stranger who's just as dunderheaded) to not shooting even when there's immediate danger is definitely up there. This is simply the case of a movie doing what it feels obligated to do, while putting as little thought into the execution as possible.

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