Directed By Renny Harlin

Starring – Madelaine Petsch, Richard Brake, Janis Ahern

The Plot – In the climactic conclusion of the “Strangers” trilogy, the survivors seeking rehabilitation from their past encounters with the masked strangers are thrust back into a fight for survival. Amidst their struggle, they uncover unsettling secrets that threaten to alter their fate, blurring the line between life and death

Rated R for strong bloody violence and adult language

The Strangers – Chapter 3 (2026) Official Trailer – Madelaine Petsch, Gabriel Basso, Ema Horvath

POSITIVES

Grasping sparingly at the straws of the movie’s appealing benefactors, the production does an exceptional job on the outlining intricacies of the sound design, particularly as a means of dependency on the limitations of the lacking imagery during various kills that are surprisingly watered down and bare for such an R-rated movie. Considering nearly everything else here is working as a detractor against the sound’s valued efforts, it’s remarkable how the boldness of detailing helps to convey a much-needed detectability that inspires our imagination to fill in the gaps of its hindering interpretation, and with this third installment involving the most disposable bodies of the entire series, the mixers and editors are huge contributors towards keeping an audience faithfully invested in what’s transpiring, serving as the single justifiable instance for this movie to even attain a big screen showcase. Aside from this, while my results with the film unfortunately served as more of the same for this underwhelming franchise, I can at least assess that this is a finishing chapter in every essence, from the resolution of the primary conflict, to the filled in gaps of backstory exposition that help to give us a deeper lived-in sense of everything transpiring within Venus, Oregon. As to where other advertised final efforts typically leave room for future installments, in order to squeeze the money cow of every last drop, it’s at least commendable that Harlin understands that he’s already stretched this film further than it had any right to be stretched, and if there’s one saving grace to having to sit through these films, it’s knowing that it’s all over, and it cannot hurt me any longer.

NEGATIVES

After three of the most lazily constructed and creatively frustrating efforts ever put to paper, I can finally assess that this Strangers trilogy is among the worst horror trilogies that I’ve ever seen, with Harlin seemingly learning nothing from the plaguing problems of his first two films that serve just as much of a monumental detractor, this time around, beginning with the script co-written by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland. I hate to establish naming blame to anyone responsible for this fumbling flatulence but again this is an example of an overly explaining and meandering mess that smashes any semblance of mystique left within these characters, in favor of unnecessary insight and overly predictable big reveals that any audience member could capably conjure in their imaginative minds without the movie spending ample time within its 86-minute runtime to clumsily flesh out. The transitions to the past aren’t established in the depths of the conflict at the movie’s forefront, so they’re inspired purely for the advantage of the audience, without anything even closely resembling a contextual leaning into them, all the while constantly intruding on the progression of this narrative, which feels spontaneously manufactured in the opportunistic impulse of stitching something pretentiously profound to such an unoriginal slasher movie. In this aspect, there is a character thread so unsubtly established in the material about surviving grief, taking Maya, our surviving protagonist of the first two movies, down some uncomfortably tone-deaf and exaggerated leaps of logic that seemingly compromises everything that we’ve established about her during the first two installments, without anything that even comes close meaningfully to adding to that thematic intention, matched only by these artificially distracting lines of dialogue, in which our characters illustrate the quiet confines of grief’s unrelenting grasp. It’s also quite unfortunate that the five years that Harlin has been involved in producing and directing this project, that it’s left such a lasting blemish on an otherwise decent career, with his fleshing out of this story not coming close to conjuring anything empathetic about these characters, nor satisfying about their deaths, to justify nearly five hours of being put through such cinematic drivel. Harlin has always had a problem with prolonging tension in a scene, particularly in the abruptness of resolutions that give audiences no time to revel in the uncertainty of an environment, but even Harlin’s framing of scenes leave more to be desired, this time around, not only with the uncompelling element of shots geographically persisting from so outside the danger zone to what’s transpiring, but also towards accessibly vital characterization, with his protagonist and antagonists being conveniently stupid when the script needed them to be, featuring intelligently-dismissing leaps of logic so glaringly gigantic that nobody watching could be dumbed-down enough to properly go along with. Sometimes, it pertains to characters answering the door and going outside, despite being so evidently scared by the intrusion of strangers knocking, while other times it involves Maya constantly backing herself into a corner on her route to escape, and while I’ve grown up adoring brain-dead horror movies with an abundance of illogical cliches to the design of characters, I couldn’t approach the decisions in this movie with anything other than unintended laughter, especially with such a humiliating form of execution to the sequencing that couldn’t even be resolved with carnage candy. Even in the worst horror movies that you’ve ever seen, some practical effects of gruesome brutality could at least offer temporary reprieve from such unfulfilling efforts, but the kills here are so condensed and hemmed down visually in ways that severely lack the artistry to connect tangibly to the audience, especially with some potential in the unusual instruments of devastation that should’ve surmised something far more endearing in their disposal, but instead don’t feel any more deviously elevated from characters using a sharp knife for the other 90% of the movie’s kills. Beyond this, I also found the performances to be much more lacking than previous installments, particularly Madelaine Petsch, who doesn’t feel as emotionally challenged by the one-dimensionality that this third chapter sedates her with. While the script is doing her no favors, whatsoever, Petsch stumbles in the confines of the stone-faced stoicism that materializes practically instantly to the character’s ensuing development, offering her little in the way of desperation, sorrow, or anguish to make her vengeance feel readable or uplifting to the audience, especially the complete absence of fear that never felt palpable in some questionably uncomfortable situations that the script pits her in, then wastes away without showing the extensive duress that such an action has on her already frail psyche. On top of this, I was looking forward to more of Richard Brake in this installment than the previous two, but his increase in screentime doesn’t surmise any of the eccentric mannerisms or sleaziness as his memorable turns in “Barbarian” or any of his appearances in Rob Zombie movies, instead feeling like a paycheck film in obligation that can be mirrored in the flat registry that he delivers to the unconvincing nature of his deliveries. Finally, while I momentarily commended the second film for increasing the pacing, with more of the pay-offs permeating from Chapter One’s painfully agonizing set-up after set-up, I regret to say that it has regressed once more in Chapter Three, with some meanderingly repetitive flashback sequences persisting with the kind of padding that feels obligational to meet a runtime. This is really where the idea would’ve had better results as one collective two hour movie, instead of three 90-minute offerings, as not only does the movie rely far too heavily on clumsily enacted exposition to paint a deeper meaning to scenes in the foreground that don’t even necessarily require them, but the progression of the aforementioned current day arc is frustratingly halted continuously throughout the engagement, without anything coming close to urgency in Maya’s dire isolation from the outside world, in turn grinding the brakes on momentum before the movie has ever had a chance to even lean on its acceleration.

OVERALL
“The Strangers: Chapter Three” is an inevitably underwhelming and unentertaining coda of a conclusion to a once ambitious franchise, where all of the lore and mystique of these masked slashers has been leveled, in favor of generic storytelling and filmmaking that have irresponsibly taken advantage of the patience of their faithful audience on three separate occasions. With flatly registered acting and characterization, monotonous direction from Renny Harlin, and a complete absence of frights and carnage candy, it’s an unavoidably disappointing resolution that hacks at your time, money and consciousness, proving that if opportunity comes knocking, choose not to answer it

My Grade: 2.4 or F