The latest installment, The Strangers – Chapter 3, brings the rebooted Strangers trilogy to a disappointing and confusing close. This third film is a frustrating experience, failing to deliver any genuine scares. It jumps between the present-day story and pointless flashbacks that try to explain the killers’ origins, but these flashbacks don’t offer any real understanding of why they kill. The actors deliver flat performances, failing to make the villains feel truly menacing. The movie ends with a ridiculous climax, effectively ending a series that never managed to rise above standard horror clichés. While it’s slightly better than the previous film – which was truly awful – that’s not saying much.
The story takes us back to the isolated, wooded town of Venus, Oregon. Three years before the main events, a woman named Hannah Galway makes the mistake of staying at the local inn. There, she’s subjected to a needlessly graphic and ultimately pointless torture scene involving a character named Dollface. Director Renny Harlin pads out the 90-minute movie with an unnecessary murder before returning to the core storyline.
The scene shifts to Maya (Madelaine Petsch), injured and hiding after the ambulance crash at the end of the previous chapter. She witnesses Scarecrow (Gabriel Basso) and Dollface loading Pinup’s (Ema Horvath) body into their truck. Injured, Maya escapes into the foggy night, and then unexpectedly runs into a series of strange situations as she tries to get away. It doesn’t take long – even early in the first act – to figure out where the writers, Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland, are heading with the story, and it feels quite far-fetched.
I was immediately drawn back to the past, twelve years earlier, witnessing Sheriff Rotter, looking much younger, at the trial of a boy accused of murder. It quickly became clear that the evil lurking in this town wasn’t new – the monster was unleashed again, and this time, a child was helping him with his horrifying deeds. Back in the present, Maya’s sister, Debbie, arrives with her husband and a security expert, determined to find answers. They don’t have to look far to discover a disturbing pattern – people have been vanishing in Venus for years, and it’s clear this town holds dark secrets.
Lionsgate
Chapter 3 of The Strangers doesn’t succeed in creating fear. The violence is over-the-top and predictable, lacking any genuine suspense or jump scares. The story relies on senseless brutality without offering any meaningful depth. It’s a repetitive cycle of gruesome killings, where victims desperately beg for mercy. The killers act without motive or enjoyment, simply harming people because they are able to. This makes them feel robotic and ultimately, the movie is incredibly boring.
A major weakness plagues all three films and really needs to be fixed. It’s surprising that director Renny Harlin, known for exciting action movies like Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger, created such uninspired and predictable villains. Even Jason Voorhees, the silent killer from Friday the 13th, has more compelling character than these villains. The characters in The Strangers are simply boring and lack depth. Spending so much time showing their backstory only reinforces how unremarkable they are. Their lifeless expressions and vacant stares fail to create any genuine fear. The films needed more than just masked people to be truly terrifying, and it’s baffling that Harlin didn’t recognize this.
Lionsgate
The three movies were filmed simultaneously, reusing the same locations – the inn, hospital, and woods – for most outdoor scenes. As a result, Chapter 3 doesn’t offer anything new or visually interesting. Watching Maya stumble around in the dark and being led around feels dull, and even the Strangers’ underground hideout looks worn and predictable. The film had chances to surprise and genuinely scare the audience, but it consistently fails to do so, which is disappointing. Instead of being unsettling and frightening, the set design feels like a poorly-made haunted house attraction.
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Gabriel Basso is a naturally captivating performer, and anyone familiar with his work in films like Hillbilly Elegy and A House of Dynamite, or the Netflix series The Night Agent, can attest to his skill. However, he feels miscast as the Scarecrow, even after the character’s motivations are revealed. The plot, which is predictable from the start, quickly becomes unbelievable. The relationship that develops between his character and Maya was so absurd that it caused the audience at my screening to burst into laughter – definitely not the desired response for a scary horror movie.
A new Strangers movie will almost certainly happen. But the next director needs to significantly shake up the series and deliver a much stronger film than the latest one.
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2026-02-06 02:03