The Strangers – Chapter 2 is a movie built on promises. The first film in this pre-planned trilogy adapted from Bryan Bertino’s original 2008 classic functioned largely as a re-staging, a stable but largely uninspired retread of Bertino’s characters and concepts that, we learned by the end, was the launching pad for a bigger story.
Moments before the world premiere of Chapter 2 at Fantastic Fest over the weekend, director Renny Harlin, producer Courtney Solomon, and star Madelaine Petsch reassured us that with this film, we’d see what they were really doing with this trilogy. The second installment would, at last, give new shape to what started as a fairly straightforward remake.
And in its defense, The Strangers – Chapter 2 does indeed have a new shape. It’s a bigger film both in terms of location and principal cast, its concept is actually rather brave, and it does start to shade in some areas that help, at least marginally, to explain why this is a trilogy of films all shot at the same time. What it doesn’t do is frighten, entertain, or add any extra emotional weight to a story that was straining to prove its relevance to begin with. If the first film was a chore because it was a predictable remake, the second is a chore because it has direction, but no real movement.
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Picking up in the immediate aftermath of the last film, Maya (Petsch) is still in the hospital after her encounter with the Strangers in the previous film. Her fiance is dead, her body is battered, and she doesn’t know who to trust, which makes it especially harrowing when she realizes at least some people in this small town in the Pacific Northwest seem to know more about what happened to her than they’re willing to admit. So when the Strangers return to tie up their remaining loose end from a night of violence, Maya plots an escape, sending her off on another long fight for survival.
I am only barely exaggerating when I say that’s the entire plot, which is not in and of itself a bad thing. Beginning in various hospital rooms and continuing on through countryside, Chapter 2 frames itself as, essentially, one long 90-minute chase sequence, as Maya looks for people she can trust, fights for her life, and finds every plan she can scrape together compromised by interference from the Strangers, who are on her trail throughout. It’s honestly a good concept, and it builds on what the first film established about this town, that everyone seems to, at the very least, have an inkling of what the Strangers are up to, if they’re not active collaborators. It means that few places are safe for Maya, and it allows Petsch to play the final girl with a real sense of resolve and dogged resilience.
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But that, to be clear, is just what the concept calls for. In actual practice, The Strangers – Chapter 2 emerges as an aimless slog without a real sense of direction, both geographically and thematically. Harlin, who’s made some solid horror in the past, falls back on tired setups continuously, to the point that I counted two consecutive sequences that employ almost identical devices to create some semblance of suspense.
A couple of solid jump scares aside, it’s an exercise in rote repetition more than creative tension, and just when you think the film’s going to do something interesting—the camera occasionally switches perspective to make it feel more like the Strangers themselves are the ones being stalked, for example—it veers off into something totally different, or abandons a sequence altogether. It’s not a story so much as a string of setpieces linked by one woman and three masked killers, none of whom seem to be moving with any particular urgency. At one point, when the masked Strangers are listlessly walking alongside a creek in the middle of the day, I had to stifle a laugh. They looked like they were in search of a lost contact lens more than a victim.
Along the way, the film also attempts to expand upon Strangers lore, and while that sounds like a bad idea to some diehard fans of the original Bryan Bertino film, I actually applaud that effort. If you’re going to pick up this concept and run with it, you can basically do two things: Make The Strangers: Prey at Night, which already happened, or make these Strangers a little less…well, strange. Pulling back the curtain is inevitable, and there’s nothing wrong with examining the violence minds behind those masks.
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But, at a certain point, you start to wonder if the film is actually doing that or just trying to make you think it is. A few more details emerge, sure, but if you’re going to build lore out of a concept that was explicitly designed around the idea of anonymity, you need ambition, and this movie just doesn’t have it. Even the scenes that are meant to drum up maximum suspense over who the Strangers really are play more as confusing than intriguing, perhaps because the film is saving the biggest reveals for Chapter 3.
And that, in a nutshell, is everything wrong with these films so far. Chapter 1 was a retread in an effort to lay new groundwork and set a stage, and while Chapter 2 certainly takes a different approach, in the end it feels more like an extended 90–minute trailer (it feels quite a bit longer sometimes, I must say) for the finale. Planning longform stories is good. Stage-setting and then paying things off is good. Building intrigue is good.
But The Strangers – Chapter 2 does not feel like it succeeds at doing any of those things. It feels like filler, like a trilogy sounded good on paper so a middle chapter was necessary. This film was built on promises, on the idea this middle chapter would finally deliver the bigger story at work here. Instead, we got the cinematic equivalent of Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown’s foot at the last second.
All that said, like Charlie Brown, I will be back for Chapter 3, because maybe, just maybe, it’ll make the trilogy worth it.
The Strangers – Chapter 2 comes to theaters on September 26, 2025.
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