Last year, Lionsgate and director Renny Harlin delivered one of the worst-received horror movies of 2024 with The Strangers: Chapter 1, which attempted to relaunch the Strangers franchise with the first in a planned trilogy. That film was lambasted by critics and horror fans for being a hollow retread of the original 2008 film, with empty characters, sloppy direction, and a lack of the franchise’s signature violence. Now, everyone involved has repeated the feat with The Strangers – Chapter 2 (or, to be more accurate, kept doing the same feat, since they shot three films back-to-back), which is already shaping up to be one of the worst-received horror movies of 2025. Heaven help us when Chapter 3 launches next year.
In case you’ve forgotten, Chapter 1 ended with Maya (Madelaine Petsch) in the hospital after surviving her encounter with the eponymous masked killers. Her fiancé Ryan (Froy Gutierrez) wasn’t as lucky, having bled out before the ambulance arrived. Chapter 2 picks up exactly where the first film left off, with Maya still recovering from her ordeal and waiting for a bailout from her sister Debbie (Rachel Shenton). But when Sheriff Rotter (Richard Brake) reveals to a diner full of local patrons that Maya survived the night, Scarecrow, Dollface and Pin-Up Girl storm the hospital in search of their intended victim. What ensues is essentially one long chase scene as an entire film, with only a couple of small breaks as Maya desperately tries to find a way out of town.
If you thought the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the first film would result in changes to the sequels, well, it really is more of the same. Although the filmmakers did do some additional photography on Chapters 2 and 3 after Chapter 1’s release to address fan feedback, the reality is Harlin and co. shot all three films simultaneously, which means they will inevitably share many stylistic similarities and a core creative ethos. Sadly, said ethos is a woefully bland take on what was already a not great slasher franchise. The characters are still empty, the direction is still sloppy, and although this installment does thankfully get quite a bit bloodier, it’s nowhere near enough to make up for the fact that the story being told over the course of this trilogy likely could have been conveyed in one film instead of three.
The biggest indicator of this is that after two films, Maya is still not much of a character. She becomes vaguely more textured by her experiences, and Petsch does a good job expressing her tortured weariness after being in fight or flight mode for so long, but Maya’s only discernable traits are still “loves Ryan” and “would like to not get stabbed to death.” Her only conflict is external, meaning in this film her cat and mouse game with the killers. There is no inner struggle that drives her actions, no flaws or doubts to explore in her miniscule interactions with the stock caricatures populating the town. Her relationship with Ryan in the first film was similarly devoid of tension, but instead of using Ryan’s absence as an opportunity to give Maya more dimension, Chapter 2 just piles on the trauma and hopes that’s enough.
Rather than developing its protagonist, Chapter 2 makes the bizarre decision to try explaining the actions of one of its villains, Pin-Up Girl. In a handful of eye-rolling flashbacks to her childhood, Chapter 2 charts her evolution into a psychopathic murderer as a girl on the playground, where she goes through horrific trials like “a classmate stepped on her sandcastle” and “the boy she liked helped another girl when she fell off her bicycle.” I’m not kidding: These are unironically used as Pin-Up Girl’s “start of darkness” moments, which culminate in an escalation to homicidal violence that is simply too silly to take seriously. But it only gets worse when you remember that it’s antithetical to the series’ foundation. The whole idea of The Strangers is that they are literally that: strangers, with no identity and no logical motivation. They kill, as Pin-Up Girl says in the first film, “because you’re here.” So trying to get into the head of the antagonists would be misguided even if the execution wasn’t hilariously inept.
It didn’t have to be this way. The key creatives involved in this trilogy are not untalented. Renny Harlin has proven himself a capable director in the past; The Long Kiss Goodnight is a great action comedy, he turned in one of the best non-Jaws shark movies with Deep Blue Sea, and he brought some real style to what could have been bargain-bin productions like Cliffhanger. But whatever passion for the craft Harlin once had has clearly been lost, with his direction in both Chapter 2 and its predecessor being as flat and inert as horror movies can reasonably get without being outright incoherent. Madelaine Petsch acquits herself reasonably well given how much of the runtime doesn’t involve dialogue, even if Maya never becomes more than a vessel for the plot to happen to. With better scripts and a stronger creative vision, a Strangers film hinged on these two could have been something.
But two movies in, this trilogy is a disaster. Even the handful of moments where Chapter 2 briefly sparks to life, like Maya tending to her wounds in the woods or battling Pin-Up Girl inside of a moving vehicle, never amount to anything worth emotionally investing in. When the film ends in what feels like the middle of a scene, it first comes off as a mercy. But then the credits include a trailer for Chapter 3, and it can only feel like a threat.