While I believe that ambition should be applauded in the realms of franchises, it’s ultimately how filmmakers express their aspiring ideas that actually results in deciding whether a bold enterprise was actually worth the effort. Take Renny Harlin’s arguably foolhardy mission to film an entire new Strangers trilogy back to back in order to create a slasher epic arguably more audacious that what David Gordon Green attempted with his divisive Halloween trifecta. With every subsequent release it’s seeming that the Strangers might have been better served remaining as strangers and never returning since 2018’s The Strangers: Prey At Night. The first installment, while technically sound and featuring a solid central performance by Madelaine Petsch, was essentially nothing more than a straight remake of the original, 2008, home invasion movie with only a more open ending, and the second proved to be something of an aimless mess as it threw in boar attacks and a lot of wandering to disguise the fact that the plot had seemingly dried up already. Can Harlin and his gang of masked slashers somehow pull out the stops for the final chapter and finally make this bizarre experiment pay off?
When we last left the bruised and bloodied Maya, she was still being pursued all across the rural town of Venus, Oregon by the trio of masked strangers who had slaughtered her fiancée in an earlier home invasion. However, Maya had managed to achieve something that no one had yet managed to pull off when she succeeded in fatally taking out the killer known as Pin-Up Girl. While this is a much needed win in the Maya column, this actually changes the rules of the game in ways we could never have expected thanks to the unpredictable response of the hulking Scarecrow.
It seems that while Scarecrow and Pin-Up Girl (real name Shelly) has been up to this murderous cult shit since they were kids, after his brief mourning period is over, Scarecrow feels that Maya has the moxie and inner darkness required to wear the mask of his former love. I guess Dollface is cool with it too, because before you know it, their former victim is now being groomed to round out their trifecta and is bring brought along on the Strangers’ brutal killing sprees.
However, the world outside their little group is taking turns to both support and conspire against them. For a start, the truth behind the town conspiracy that’s allowed the Stangers to operate for so long is finally revealed, but threatening to expose it is Maya’s sister, Debbie and her husband, Howard, who have arrived in Venus to search for the missing redhead.
With the secrets of the Stangers finally laid bare, will a repeatedly traumatised Maya resist the lure of the Pin-Up Girl mask, or will Scarecrow convince her that three no longer is a crowd?
To be fair, the fate of this new Strangers trilogy was always going to live or die based on its third chapter, thanks to the fact that it’s the only one by design that actually has a point. All the Strangers movies since the original back in 2008 have mostly traded on the mystery of the terrible trio of disguised antagonists, deliberately only giving out the vaguest of clues as to what makes this mini kill-crazy cult tick. Of course, any horror fan knows that the less you know about your enemy, the more effective they are, so director Renny Harlin seems like Chapter 3 could put him between a rock and a hard place. It seems that the entire point of the trilogy existing in the first place is to pull those masks off and really get to know what’s underneath – but on the other hand, it actually has to be worth it…
Well, I don’t think it’s much of a surprise to reveal that it isn’t – in fact, there’s frequent times throughout the mercifully short third chapter where it seems the franchise itself is more anxious for it to end than we are – but even with some meat added to those lean bones, The Strangers would have been better off remaining exactly that. To be honest, I can’t actually remember if the identity of Scarecrow was actually revealed in Chapter 2 or if it was just obviously hinted at, so I won’t spoil things by letting the cat out of the bag-shaped mask, but even so, there’s a stunning lack of shocks connected to Chapter 3’s revelations. For a start, Richard Brake’s involvement is hardly a popcorn spiller of a twist primarily because they cast Richard fucking Brake – but I must confess that it’s nice to see him spectacularly blow another cinematic bid for father of the year. But aside from that, a lot of the twists are so lazily delivered and come with so little fanfare, at numerous times I was wondering if I had just forgotten information I’d already been told in a previous movie.
Even Madelaine Petsch’s Maya (her indestructible gold nail polish still remaining defiantly unchipped) has less to do this time round as she goes from victim, to fighter, to unwilling tourist as her resolve is tested by Scarecrow really wants a new plus one. However, while other past slashers that have hinged entirely on final girls getting delayed gratification against their tormentors have gotten down to business, The Strangers ultimately ends as more of a low key affair, focusing more on a battle for Maya’s soul rather than a continuing attack on her body; but while this certainly has potential, Harlin can’t quite pull it off which leaves everything feeling fairly anticlimactic.
Another victim of the central struggle between Scarecrow and Maya is virtually the rest of the cast, who now all seem weirdly like an afterthought. While it’s revealed that the town pretty much knows everything and tolerates it as long as its only out of towners who get diced, it’s never explained why they’re all so timidly complicit when they could either just simply report the crimes elsewhere or just simply move. Additionally, while the arrival of Maya’s sister, her impressively wet husband and a blurly PI had the opportunity to mix things up a bit, this is also barely explored in favour of just providing more victims for the body count, but weirdest of all is the film’s treatment of Dollface. While Scarecrow and Pin-Up Girl get fairly complete origin stories, the third member of the group is revealed to be some random, would-be victim who joins them after some murderous melodrama with a boyfriend twelve years earlier and it’s bizarre that with all the backstory that’s flying about the place, all Dollface gets is that she’s literally a homicidal third wheel.
However, despite some plentiful murder, ultimately the real crime committed here is that The Stangers: Chapter 3 not only flounders with it’s long-promiced reveals, it also proves to be insufferably dull. There’s a part of me that’s glad that Renny Harlin’s managed to get some of his directorial efforts back in the cinema after his glory days, but as it stands, he’s now three for three when it comes to bland, meandering Strangers movies. In fact, when it comes to scares, thrills or even just general interest? it’s so bankrupt, Chapter 3 should maybe file for chapter 11…
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