The Strangers - Chapter 3 Is The Be-All, End-All Of Abominable Remakes
At least the torture of watching this ill-conceived trilogy is over.
Sometimes, as a critic, you find yourself covering a beat so arduous that you contemplate an early retirement. For me, here at Inverse, that was Lionsgate’s newfangled The Strangers trilogy. What started with a gutless remake led to an abysmal Chapter 2, but surely, I prayed, the epic conclusion couldn’t get any worse. Writers Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland had already butchered Bryan Bertino’s masterstroke of rancor-thick horror beyond effectiveness. The bar was in hell; the only movement was upward, right?
Welp! If there’s anything positive to say about The Strangers - Chapter 3, it’s that Renny Harlin’s warcrime of a three-pack is over and can’t hurt us anymore.
Madelaine Petsch finishes out her sentence as Maya, who, after the events of Chapter 2, finds herself hiding from murderous Venus locals with smiley face tattoos. As the film reveals, all of Venus’ disappearances revolve around Sheriff Rotter (Richard Brake), who steps in to handle Maya. There’s also the shady alcoholic George (Gabriel Basso), one of the tatted miscreants, lurking around. Maya’s sister is on the way, so all she has to do is hold out until rescue arrives, which goes frustratingly, stupidly wrong.
Where the last film is a blight on the original’s legacy, Chapter 3 is an unwatchable embarrassment that could end careers. It’s so bad that Bertino should be able to sue for damages to The Strangers’ reputation. The only impressive quality about Chapter 3 is the amateurish ineptitude of every aspect on screen. Nothing works for 90 excruciating minutes. We’re held hostage by a sauceless, tension-devoid, wet fart of an outro with less propulsion than a pedal-less paddleboat.
The downfall starts with Cohen and Freedland’s screenplay. It’s one thing to pen a disappointing remake, it’s another to insinuate you’ve cracked the code on someone else’s airtight concept. All eyes were on their story, which is fluent only in suffocating clichés and rudderless, half-assed ideas. You know that popular Trey Parker and Matt Stone writing advice clip, where they say every story arc should be driven by “but” and “therefore?” Cohen and Freedland opt for “because” or “and then,” except they don’t even have the answers for their own broken formula.
Harlin’s thrilled audiences with glorious schlock like Deep Blue Sea or Cliffhanger, but can’t muster an iota of suspense or tension in Chapter 3. There’s a penetrating sense of exhaustion that neuters any tonal spikes. Principal photography on all three films was shot in succession, and it almost feels like by the time Harlin rolled on Chapter 3, his cast and crew were only thinking about their plane ride out of Bratislava. There’s no spectacularity about anything on screen; Harlin fills his blank canvas with stick figures and solid colors.
Everyone’s giving the bare minimum, from screenplay to production design to performances. It’s a shame, because Petsch was the only watchable thing about the terrible trifecta’s first two legs. Here, she’s fighting off horse tranquilizer drowsiness; as emotionless as a tourist trap’s wax figures. Basso’s somehow worse, spitting out dialogue that had my audience howling with laughter for all the wrong reasons, between crazy eye spells that look way more like an unpracticed O-face. The hunt-and-stalk excitement has worn off, and you can catch this pain of disinterest in actors’ eyes as scenes slog onward. Perhaps that’s because Cohen and Freedland write their characters as some of the dullest, least motivated, and toss-aside-able NPCs the horror genre has ever seen, which can’t be fulfilling for performers.
Once the highlight of these abominable movies, Madelaine Petsch sleepwalks through the final chapter.
Does Chapter 3 at least try something narratively bonkers? Yes, but — like I’ve mentioned in each review so far — Cohen and Freedland so moronically misunderstand what makes Bertino’s The Strangers steamroll audiences. Chapter 3 forces meaningless backstories down our throats to remove any mystique about Venus’ masked murderers, opting for predictable villain setups that make the classification “generic” sound exotic. Harlin fumbles fresh character introductions, payoff reveals, and bloody murder scenes with the same flatlining level of disenchantment. I’ve seen Uwe Boll films with more composure and captivation; Chapter 3 might as well come with branded nap blankets.
If there’s a more busted film than The Strangers - Chapter 3 this year, Hollywood’s charted a new low. It’s shallower than a coy pond, dumber than bricks, and solidifies Harlin’s experiment as one of the worst horror series in history. I can’t believe Lionsgate thought, for even a brief second, they could Fear Street these flicks and cause a ruckus. You couldn’t pay me enough to watch the all-in-one cut that stitches every chapter together into one flowing feature. Bad is bad, no matter the delivery method. Why torture yourself for over four and a half hours, when a faster 90 minutes will already make you question your faith in the movie gods?
