The Strangers: Chapter 2 (dir. Renny Harlin)
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 98 mins
UK Distributor: Lionsgate
UK Release Date: 26 September 2025
WHO’S IN THE STRANGERS: CHAPTER 2?
Madelaine Petsch, Gabriel Basso, Ema Horvath, Richard Brake, Rachel Shenton, Froy Gutierrez, Florian Clare, Brooke Lena Johnson, JR Esposito, Pablo Sandstrom, Nola Wallace, Brian Law, Janis Ahern, Jamie Taylor Ballesta, Sara Freedland, Pedro Leandro
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Renny Harlin (director), Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland (writers), Alastair Burlingham, Mark Canton, Charlie Dombek, Christopher Milburn, Gary Raskin and Courtney Solomon (producers), Justin Caine Burnett (composer), José David Montero (cinematographer), Michelle Harrison (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Despite surviving her encounter with masked invaders, Maya (Petsch) isn’t yet out of the woods – literally and figuratively…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON THE STRANGERS: CHAPTER 2?
We are now two-thirds of the way through director Renny Harlin’s triptych of spin-offs from Bryan Bertino’s home invasion horror The Strangers, and the only truly frightening to come out of it so far is the fact that someone thought it was a good idea to greenlight the most unnecessary movie trilogy since Peter Jackson was strong-armed into stretching The Hobbit out further than it ever needed to be.
Chapter 1 was already bad, being nothing more than a tension-free rehash of the original film with much less inspired visuals, bland performances and a noticeably absent sense of atmosphere, but somehow Chapter 2 is paradoxically both better and worse than its immediate predecessor. Better, since unlike Chapter 1 it actually does one or two things a little bit different, and ever so lightly touches upon a couple of interesting ideas. Worse, because it still finds ways to mess up its own potential, forcing itself into a sluggish routine that leaves you far more bored than you ever are scared, as well as confounded by some of its rather baffling directions.
The film picks up immediately where Chapter 1 left off, when – spoilers, I guess – the masked trio of home invaders managed to have their murderous way with young couple Maya (Madeleine Petsch) and Ryan (Froy Gutierrez), but while the latter has succumbed to his injuries, Maya has survived and is now recovering in the world’s emptiest hospital – seriously, even for a remote location such as this, there are almost no doctors or nurses to be seen, let alone any other patients. Quickly, though, Maya realises that her assailants are still after her, and thus begins an elongated cat-and-mouse game made up of running, hiding, more running and more hiding, whether it’s in the impossibly empty hospital corridors or a rainy horse stable or the vast woodland area surrounding them all.
For a movie that’s pretty much on its feet as soon as the main title pops up – following a few random and seemingly unrelated clips that are jarringly inserting in between the opening production logos – it’s almost fascinating how little actually happens in The Strangers: Chapter 2. It really is just a feature-length chase movie, one that’s made to feel infinitely longer by the utter dunderheadedness of characters who either make the wrong decisions – for instance, lighting a fire whilst on the run in the middle of the woods where anyone with eyes can definitely see the smoke it produces – or don’t do what they should and just eradicate the problem instead of standing there and acting creepy. It’s further elongated by sequences that borrow heavily from other, much more effective horror movies, including the empty-hospital aesthetic from Halloween II, the menacing tight facial close-ups of Psycho, and perhaps weirdest of all a full-on recreation of the inciting incident from The Revenant, only with the bear replaced by an awful CGI boar that looks like Pumbaa from the live-action Lion King movies. In fact, Pumbaa might have looked more real.
The script by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland continues to give no reason as to why the viewer should care about Petsch’s Maya, who despite the actor’s physically committed turn remains an exceptionally bland protagonist who only ever does things that either get her caught or placed in worse situations (lighting a fire while being chased through the woods? Really?!). Similarly, the villains are given very little to do other than the same schtick they’ve been doing for four movies now, with one being granted the privilege of childhood flashbacks – because that worked so well for Michael Myers and Leatherface in their respective prequels, and totally didn’t rob them of any unflinching menace – which make their descent into psychopathy seem all the more sudden and over the flimsiest of reasons. Every other supporting character in this movie is barely even a character, most of them being offed as soon as they’re introduced, while others are a mere collective of red herrings who behave in such an intimidating fashion for no real reason other than to drudge up suspicion that they may be the strangers of the title. Since there’s virtually nobody to latch onto, or any kind of personal drama that offers something beyond the repetitive stalking and running, it quickly becomes an utter bore to sit through, though perhaps not to the level of the previous film since it’s at least not repeating itself as much.
Not that any of it matters, because like Chapter 1 before it, Chapter 2 ends abruptly and with several unresolved arcs and themes left to be resolved in the upcoming third and mercifully last chapter (which is teased in a mid-credits trailer). It’s by then that you’re wondering why this had to be a trilogy at all, because the way that these first two films have been structured gives little reason as to why this particular story, as uneventful and emotionally empty as it has so far been, deserved to be stretched out so much. You could easily take a handful of elements from both of these movies and combine them with whatever may be going on in the third movie, which (sight unseen) seems to actually expand upon the few intriguing ideas that are only barely explored in this one, to make a single film that would have cut the faffing around by well over half. It still might not have been very good, since it would have still suffered from many of the same problems, but at least Harlin would have avoided compartmentalising a singular concept that never needed to be divided up in the first place.
So far, The Strangers: Chapter 3 has no release date. But when it does, I’ll be there to see it – not because there was anything in the previous two movies that was worth coming back for, but because at this point, even after this wildly unentertaining middle part, I might as well see it through to the bitter end.
SO, TO SUM UP…
The Strangers: Chapter 2 continues director Renny Harlin’s increasingly unnecessary trilogy in almost spectacularly sluggish fashion, padding out an uneventful chase narrative with bland characters and redundant scares.
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