Directed By Renny Harlin

Starring – Madelaine Petsch, Rachel Shenton, Gabriel Basso

The Plot – The Strangers are back, and more brutal and relentless than ever. When they learn that one of their victims, Maya (Petsch), is still alive, they return to finish what they’ve started. With nowhere to run and no one to trust, Maya must survive another horrific chapter of terror as The Strangers, driven by a senseless, unceasing purpose, pursue her, more than willing to kill anyone who stands in their way.

Rated R for bloody violence and adult language

The Strangers – Chapter 2 (2025) Official Trailer – Madelaine Petsch

POSITIVES

Considering the original film was a completely unentertaining and unengaging mess, it’s nice that there are a couple of aspects to make this second installment to the trilogy a noteworthy improvement, even if the end results bring back a lot of those bitter feelings that further condemned this once ambitious franchise. For starters, Madelaine Petsch is still the very best part of this franchise, returning as final girl, Maya, not only with more emotionality towards the depth of her portrayal, but also endless bouts with physicality that prove her to be so much more than just another pretty face in the slasher subgenre. This film picks up directly where the last left off, and because of that, Petsch taps into the tenderly traumatic side of grief to compliment her stirring registry conveying fear, and while the characterization does her no favors towards firmly investing into her character, Petsch’s endless stream of tears, as well as her piercing scream, do prove that she’s the right actress for the job, allowing her a far more opportunistic element to the film as its soul protagonist, this time around. In addition to the stoic performance from Petsch, the film is also noticeably paced better than its aridly dry predecessor, both with an opening act that wastes very little time pitting us right back into the boundaries of this conflict, but also a far more expansive outlook in backstory towards the masked antagonists, which help to take some of the pressure from Maya. While the execution of the latter left far more to be desired in the reaping rewards of the creative impulse, the former breaks the interchangeable tradition of this franchise by refusing to follow the familiarities of previous installments, helping to keep the story moving a lot more fluidly than the 2024 installment, even if not always entirely entertaining in the expanse of its 93-minute engagement.

NEGATIVES

This is still a morbid mess of a franchise that continuously shoots itself and its progress in the foot, especially with another lackluster screenplay that makes some audacious decisions to test the patience of its audience, leaving Harlin and his production once again landing more harm than I’m sure any of them intended. Most noticeably persistent is the floundering characterization, which balances its time between pointing out the many idiotic decisions of Maya, when it’s not carving out a backstory outline for The Strangers themselves, and while Maya stopping to set a campfire out in the woods while being chased, or locking herself in a morgue freezer while being chased, or continuously believing that anybody she comes across is legitimately there to help her are detrimental towards developing an ideal badass of a heroine protagonist, I truly feel that it’s the latter that does the most damage to the integrity of the film, especially in only utilizing such an angle in three sparing scenes throughout the engagement. I’m somebody who prefers to keep the mystique and ambiance of masked killers unaddressed in movies, especially with their supernatural tolerance to pain, but I was willing to go along with what this movie wanted to throw at me, with regards to how these townsfolk became psychopaths, and I’m disappointed to say that the movie doesn’t uncover anything even slightly shocking or substantially profound to land the execution, with hilarious outlining of an ongoing mystery between their identities that made me feel like I was three steps ahead of the movie at all times. Between the lingering camera work and creepy essence of the townsfolk all but literally winking at the lens, the film shows its hand early and quite often throughout the proceedings, leading to one such unmasking moment that inspires dramatic music, even with a complete dud of a landing, and when the movie does transition back to a youthful time in the experiences of these slashers, the motivation for such elicited a humiliating fit of laughter to what I was being told, making me wish that this secondary chapter didn’t even opt for such a gimmick, especially since it really didn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know. On top of this, the horror elements of the film are once again grounded and flat to Harlin’s direction, without any semblance of urgency of palpable tension to chase sequences that should come naturally to inspire such vital aspects. As expected, the film opts for many jump scares in its jolting sound design, but much worse than that, so much of its gore and creativity with its kills feels scrubbed and sanitized in the air of intrusive editing that continuously makes them feel like they’re being executed off-screen, and it not only undercuts the power and ferocity of these knife-wielding masked antagonists, but it never finds ways to keep the audience hooked on the edge of their seats with situational suspense, leaving the payoffs to many of these personal conflicts feeling bare with the kind of absence of lingering impact that convey Harlin’s best days as a daring storyteller feel far behind him. Even the technical components of the movie have a chance to shine shitly, with annoyingly nagging editing techniques that continuously cut into the clarity and coherence of the visual storytelling, as well as some unforeseen special effects options in a computer-generated animal that stood out in the worst kind of ways. On the editing, the movie’s opening half strangely makes the visuals feel like they’re held captive inside of a dream sequence, with strangely surreal abrasiveness in the cuts that completely mar continuity, and the second half rushing through some of the integral responses of these aforementioned physical conflicts, in ways that make them feel like montages without music. It made the visuals difficult to approach, even from a tabulating perspective, and considering its cuts influence the movie’s violence far more lingering than the masked crazies doing the killing, it overexaggerates the landing in ways that reach for too much expressive emphasis during its most inappropriate times. Finally, that previously mentioned artificial animal is a wild boar, and while geographically it is accurate that such a creature exists in the woods of Oregon, it comes at such a random time in the extent of the pursuit between Maya and her adversaries, and one in which the latter completely disappear, and the boar itself is rendered hilariously with the most obvious of artificial movements and color textures that don’t line up seamlessly with the environmental lighting that influences the setting of the scene. While it’s nice to see an unpredictable aspect of the environment influence a conflict that persists between humans, the movie stops dead in its tracks for nearly ten minutes when this thing bursts unceremoniously onto the scene, feeling like the deleted sequence of the bear attacking in “The Revenant”, but without the tangibility and overwhelming vulnerability that captures your undivided believability in such a surreal attack.

OVERALL
“The Strangers Chapter Two” might serve as a moderate improvement to its uninspiring and near shot-for-shot predecessor, but it’s still an unnecessarily arduous trilogy that slices audience optimism with the kind of alienating execution that robs what little mystique is left from this already derivatively dry franchise. While Madelaine Petsch constantly works overtime towards imbedding empathy to our intended protagonists, the extent of her bewildering actions play to the dumb blonde trope that would typically see her as the opening kill to any superior slasher before it, cementing a second chapter lacking the page-turning synergy to keep its horror hound audience from finally closing the book on this failed franchise.

My Grade: 3.1 or F