I’ve made no secret of how strongly I believe Renny Harlin’s reboot trilogy of The Strangers has been a complete disaster. My review of last year’s The Strangers: Chapter 2 was possibly the angriest piece I’ve ever written. As a critic, you have to maintain a degree of optimism for every film, and I held onto a microscopic kernel of hope that The Strangers: Chapter 3 might at least attempt a marginally entertaining conclusion. But surprise, surprise: The Strangers: Chapter 3 is exactly as putrid as the previous two instalments, a wet fart of a conclusion to an already abominable trilogy and a stain on the otherwise fantastic original films.
The Strangers: Chapter 3 begins immediately where the previous film ended. Maya (Madelaine Petsch) has managed to kill Shelly, also known as Pin-Up Girl (Ema Horvath), one of the three masked Strangers who have terrorized her over the past two films. Scarecrow, who had a romantic connection to Pin-Up Girl dating back to childhood, is particularly distraught by her death. With no other options left, Maya realizes the only way she can defeat the Strangers is to kill them before they kill her.
And that’s about it. The story is bare bones, with no substance whatsoever.
Like The Strangers: Chapter 2, the film pads out its running time with multiple flashbacks detailing the killers’ backstories. This time, they focus on how the duo recruited the woman who would become Dollface and eventually formed a murderous trio. The film attempts to comment on the cycle of violence, treating trauma and the urge to kill almost like a virus that spreads from killer to survivor. However, as with the rest of this trilogy, the idea is completely underdeveloped.
“But surprise, surprise: The Strangers: Chapter 3 is exactly as putrid as the previous two instalments…”
The ongoing demystification of these killers only continues to highlight a fundamental misunderstanding of what made the original 2008 film frightening in the first place: their randomness. Instead, they come across as a trio of edgy losers. The flashbacks also reveal Sheriff Rotter’s (Richard Brake) connection to the killers, but the film never justifies why the entire town is suddenly willing to tolerate the Strangers targeting outsiders for a decade. When the film opts for these revelations, they are not “aha” moments so much as painfully obvious twists, telegraphed as far back as The Strangers: Chapter 1.
Maya also proves herself to be one of the least interesting horror protagonists I’ve seen in decades. With most of her physical action confined to The Strangers: Chapter 2, she is largely reduced here to limping, sitting in captivity and glaring angrily at the camera. Madelaine Petsch continues to do her best, but the godawful script gives her nothing to work with. There is no further growth, no hidden depth or nuance, and nothing to make Maya even remotely engaging. Her scenes with Gabriel Basso, in particular, are a slog. The film still mistakes extreme facial closeups for genuine tension, leaving the audience waiting impatiently for it to move on.
I almost don’t need to reiterate the shoddy writing and direction, but it is astounding how, once again, every character appears to possess the self-preservation instincts of a lemming. Characters routinely stand around doing nothing, waiting to be killed. At one point, Maya’s sister Debbie (Rachel Shenton) arrives in town with her husband and a bodyguard in hopes of rescuing her, yet all three display the same level of idiocy, as if their intelligence vanishes the moment they appear on screen.
“The story is bare bones, with no substance whatsoever.”
The obliviousness is not limited to the victims. There are sequences where Maya gains the upper hand on the Strangers, but not because she outwits them. Instead, it happens only because the killers stand there slack-jawed, like video game characters with the controller unplugged.
Scarecrow, in a fit of rage, violently swings his axe into a corpse over and over again. Yet when the camera finally pans to the body, there is no visible impact, as if he had been swinging at air the entire time. That, in a nutshell, is what this Strangers trilogy amounts to: a whole lot of nothing. It offers no interesting commentary, no compelling characters, no memorable moments, and not even a single noteworthy kill. It is a lifeless cash grab of the lowest order.
There is not a single creative bone to be found across the entire lifespan of this trilogy. All The Strangers: Chapter 3 manages to do is underline how thoroughly this endeavour has been a complete waste of time and money for everyone involved. That includes the cast, the crew, the studio and any audience member who dared to watch it. We have reached the bottom of the cinematic barrel, and it is time to bury this trilogy and forget it ever existed. Good riddance.
