Quick question: if we took time to get to know Strangers, wouldn’t that immediately make them not strangers? Despite the fact that this is a fairly important detail, it hasn’t stopped the second instalment of an already filmed trilogy landing in our cinemas despite the inescapable detail that Chapter 1 hardly set the genre on fire. Still, if you’re a glass half full person, you could argue that after an opening gambit that basically replayed the original 2008 movie wholesale, the second chapter was now left wide open to do whatever the hell it wanted. After all, after a couple of earlier movies that introduced us to the trio of Scarecrow, Dollface and Pin-Up Girl, we’ve still never really discovered why the Strangers do the things they do other than a creepily delivered explanation such as: “Because you were here.” Can Renny Harlin manage to inject an actual point into proceedings and avoid the trilogy curse of the “middle-movie” problem by delivering a slasher that lets us get to know the dastardly trio while still keeping them as Strangers?
Maya Lucas wakes in the Venus County Hospital in Oregon after a home invasion by a masked trio of tormentors left her with a knife wound in her stomach and her fiancé, Ryan deader than disco. Taking some time to allow the horror of her experience to properly take hold (about ten minutes), Maya soon discovers that her ordeal is nowhere near being over as her curiously deserted hospital is visited by three individuals who don’t give a fuck about the times of visiting hours. That’s right, the twisted trifecta of Scarecrow, Dollface and Pin-Up Girl have decided to finish what they started and proceed to stalk their prey through the many floors of the building before she ma ages to escape into the nearby forest.
Meanwhile, while Maya once again fights for her life, the various, shifty looking townsfolk of Venus line up to be potential suspects. Is the ineffectual Sheriff and his deputy hiding something important? How about the various patrons and the workers at the diner who all seen to be overly concerned about gathering up as much details as they can? And what’s the story about the supposedly kindly Nurse Danica and her roommates Chris, Gregory and Wayne, who each seem to fit the profile of the three mysterious killers?
But as Maya goes native in the Oregon forests to stay one step ahead of her pursuers, we are treated to flashbacks that start to open up some sort of origin story for whomever lurks behind the mask of Pin-Up Girl and the reason why the Strangers always start their rampages with a request for a mysterious Tamara. However, flashbacks or no, none of this is going to help Maya who, no matter where she goes, can avoid the masked misanthropes who seek to bury an axe in her chest. Will her never ending nightmare cumulate in some sort of payback, or will the Strangers notch up yet another unwilling victim?
I mentioned middle-movie problems in my opening for a good reason, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film that fits that issue more perfectly than The Strangers: Chapter 2. Even though it’s fairly self explanatory, the middle-movie problem is where the centre point of a trilogy has to contend with not having the usual building blocks of storytelling to utilise chiefly because it doesn’t have either a proper beginning or ending to call it’s own. Some movies such as The Empire Strikes Back and Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers have managed to duck such storytelling issues by managing to craft their own identity within the larger story; however, many others like The Matrix Reloaded, and David Gordon Green’s Halloween Kills have stumbled into the expected pitfalls thanks to uncooked plotlines, unresolved revelations and cliffhanger endings that feel less like an exciting interlude and more like a swift and powerful kick to the private parts as the realisation washes over you that you’re going to have to wait at least a year to see how it all turns out.
Unsurprisingly, The Strangers: Chapter 2 falls very much into the latter column thanks to the rather curious fact that Renny Harlin and the scripts he’s working with seem to have run out of ideas already. There’s was that lingering promise that the highly derivative opening chapter had sacrificed it’s originality in order to allow the next instalment to explore some bold, new ideas – but the only ideas the film has to offer is to simply riff off earlier movies. For a start, the last time I saw a hospital so suspiciously deserted, I was watching Halloween II (original or remake – take your pick), but that doesn’t stop Harlin from staging a near identical alternative as Madelaine Petsch is chased from the corridors of the building down into the basement by her attackers – but from here, Harlin’s inspirations go a little leftfield.
After an admittedly effective ride with a car full of likely suspects/red herrings, the movie spend almost the entirety of its middle trying to be the slasher movie equivalent of The Revenant that sees the continually battered Maya survive in the wild, stich up her reopened stab wound and – it its wildest moment – even wrestle a wild boar in a moment that bizarrely merges the Dicaprio Oscar winner with killer pig movie, Razorback. And that’s about it. From there it becomes pretty obvious that the film has given all it has to give as it all becomes one big 98 minute chase sequence that not only seems to have no direction, but even reruns some of its own tricks. It does the shock, would-be saviour suddenly catching an arrow trope multiple times, and while Harlin can still put together the odd atmospheric scene, the fact that Maya can’t escape the Strangers only mirrors that you also can’t escape the feeling that you’re trapped in a sequel that’s mostly filler.
Still, I do have to give credit to Madelaine Petsch (and her impressively unchippable nail polish) for convincingly weathering numerous cinematic beatings that include dodging Scarecrow, out manoeuvring Pin-Girl and fucking up a giant pig. In fact a scene where she finally spies herself in a mirror and emotionally takes stock of all her numerous bruises and lacerations is one of the few scenes in the whole movie that actually feels like it has something to say. It’s certainly more engrossing that the rather basic flashbacks or the ending that shoots for enigmatic but lands squarely on confusing instead.
Unless the final instalment busts out some truly gnarly twists that sees Maya turning heel, or features her sister under the Dollface mask or something, it seems that the stunning revelations once promised by the trilogy may all have to wait for the final chapter (if they even exist at all). But if Harlin and the series doesn’t manage to pull off something worthwhile, The Strangers Trilogy is currently making the divisive Halloween Trilogy look like The Dark Knight Trilogy.
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