The Strangers: Chapter 2

Grade: C

I just saw The Strangers: Chapter 2, but I still want to read spoiler websites and Reddit discussions. We begin to get some traces of an attempted backstory. It’s clear as mud. This series is about three masked killers who break into homes and kill the occupants. The famous exchange from the first film is “Why are you doing this?” “Because you were here.” Giving these mysterious slashers something of an origin story is problematic, because it provides more of a motive. Now, apparently, it’s not just because people were home.

The Strangers: Chapter 2 is the second part of what will be a trilogy. The three movies were supposed to come out much closer together, but for one reason or another, the timing has gotten more and more spread out. The Strangers: Chapter 1 had its release longer ago than I remembered (May 2024), we are just now getting Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 doesn’t have an announced release date. This second installment is quite light on plot. Most of it is chase scenes. The parts with dialogue have forced camera techniques to make everybody in the town look creepy, suspicious, and make us paranoid that any of them could be a Stranger. Other than that, there isn’t much going on here. It’s an obvious time killer/space filler/placeholder.

It’s been almost a year and a half since Chapter 1, so maybe it’s just as well that Chapter 2 keeps showing little clips from it, as refreshers. Maya (Madelaine Petsch) was left in pretty bad shape at the end of the first movie – but I get it, we need a “final girl” to be carried over to the next one. Let’s just say I am a fan. Looking forward to her inevitable appearance in Chapter 3. 

She wakes up in the hospital. Security isn’t great in hospitals in a town this size. The Strangers know where she is, and are after her. It’s nighttime, and raining like hell. She escapes the hospital, and wanders in the woods for a while. Her exploits include having an encounter with a large CGI warthog. Ominous extreme closeups and shaky camera work train us to be distrusting of everyone in the town we see. The great Richard Brake, as the sheriff, had what could be called a lineless cameo in the first installment. I appreciate that he’s used a little bit more here, but it’s still not enough to scratch the itch. When we do see who one of them is, via a Scooby-Doo kind of mask removal, I didn’t recognize them from Adam or Eve, and I heard an audible wave of “who is that” murmurs throughout the theater. See what I mean about wanting to read up on it?

The ending flashback, to the degree that I could understand it, is laughably unrealistic. In any universe resembling ours, what happens would result in people being taken to juvie. I will hold out hope, grace, and benefit of the doubt that they’re building to something, and Chapter 3, whenever it comes out, will tie everything up and send it off like it should. The Strangers: Chapter 2 is an overly lean non-event. The middle part of a sandwich is usually the best part, but not here.

Grade: C