The Strangers: Chapter 1 Review: An Uninspired Retread
Just once, I would love it if Tamara was actually home. Her friends clearly miss her and are so concerned for her that they’ll kill anyone who stops them from finding her.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 is a new horror movie set to kick off a reboot trilogy for this horror franchise. It kicked off in 2008 with Bryan Bertino’s original The Strangers movie starring Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, which has become a bit of a cult film. 10 years after, the sequel The Strangers: Prey at Night came out, and that movie was better than many expected. And now, we have a new trilogy, with Chapters 2 and 3 set to be released over the next year. And truth be told, I could not be less excited to see what happens next.
This movie adds so little to the franchise that it might as well be considered a remake of the 2008 film. It’s not a continuation of The Strangers: Prey at Night, nor does it acknowledge the events of either of its two predecessors. It seems as if Lionsgate simply wants to make more The Strangers movies, so they’re telling Bertino’s original movie again but expanding the story into a trilogy. But when you have a movie reboot so absurdly similar to the original, you’re going to invite comparisons to be drawn. And The Strangers: Chapter 1 is just an inferior version of that 2008 movie.
Like the first movie, it advertises how this is based on a true story and shares statistics about the amount of violent crimes that happen in the U.S. every year. It’s meant to be harrowing, and it is to an extent. Afterward, we have an opening scene where people are hunted down and killed by three masked strangers. Unless this scene comes back in Chapter 2 or 3, I do not understand the function of this scene besides the possibility that a test screening reaction wanted a kill earlier in the movie. A lot of horror movies have an opening kill, but this one does not add anything to the plot. It’s completely unnecessary and feels like a reshoot.
We are then introduced to our new characters, Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and Ryan (Froy Gutierrez). These two are a couple celebrating their five-year anniversary with a road trip. We instantly get a sense of their lack of common sense when she kisses him as he drives, which (expectedly) nearly gets them into a head-on collision with a truck. We then see that Ryan is asthmatic and requires an inhaler. Can you imagine if that inhaler comes back later and becomes crucial to the plot? I sure can because it’s an obvious cliché and we just saw this trope in the 2022 Scream movie.
Horror movies like The Strangers: Chapter 1 work well because the characters are isolated. It needs to be established early on that the characters are miles away from civilization and any hope for help is far away. This movie does that and has the sense to make Ryan suspicious and skeptical of the inciting event that causes them to hole up in this AirBnB. There are hints throughout this movie that the masked killers will get a bit more of a backstory in the trilogy and that some townsfolk may be involved in their actions. I don’t think the killers in The Strangers need that because the fear comes from how purely random the violence is.
What does this movie do differently from the original? It’s a bit more deliberate in that choice to put the characters far away from everyone else. They’re in a cabin in the woods, which is a classic horror setup. The big difference is the relationship between the characters. The first movie had a couple filled with sadness and tension because she had just turned down her boyfriend’s marriage proposal. It’s filled with sadness and emotional weight. But The Strangers: Chapter 1 features a very happy couple. They try to bring in a plot where it’s been five years and he hasn’t proposed yet, and they’re moving for work, but it’s very dull compared to the first movie.
As the film progresses, you realize that this movie is just recycling what we saw in the first Strangers movie beat for beat. The knock on the door, asking if Tamara is home, the killers entering the house unbeknownst to the woman, silent staring, the man not believing the woman when she says she saw someone in the house, “hello” gets written all over the door, and on and on and on. The reason why The Strangers: Prey at Night is my favorite movie in the series is because director Johannes Roberts injected life and personality into that film with neon lighting, a synth soundtrack, far more kills, and a new story. The Strangers: Chapter 1 is simply rehashing what we’ve already seen before.
It’s directed by Renny Harlin, a director who had high-profile work in the ’80s and ’90s with A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Deep Blue Sea, and a personal favorite of mine: Die Hard 2. His wide-released Hollywood work has slowed down in recent years, and this movie was gift-wrapped to be a return to form for him. But he doesn’t bring any particular style to the series. He definitely puts thought and intention into his shots, but he doesn’t bring much new to the table. It’s not a poorly directed film. There are a few annoying jump scares, but it’s far from horrendous. There just isn’t much that’s unpredictable in this movie, especially if you’ve seen the first film.
The sole sequence that feels a bit original is one where Maya and Ryan need to crawl under the house and be as quiet as possible. But even this sequence feels reminiscent of a scene from A Quiet Place. This movie is derivative, but I think the biggest turn-off is how stupid the characters can be. During one key moment towards the end, Ryan is holding a gun, and he does something so stupid that everyone in my theater began to scream at the screen. When your main characters are so dumb that the audience starts rooting for the killers, that’s not a good sign. All I can hope for is that there’s a more original story to tell in The Strangers: Chapter 2 because there’s currently no reason to watch this movie over Bertino’s 2008 original or the criminally underrated The Strangers: Prey at Night.
SCORE: 5/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 5 equates to “Mediocre.” The positives and negatives wind up negating each other, making it a wash.
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