By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Madelaine Petsch, Gabriel Basso and Ema Horvath
Directed by Renny Harlin
Written by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland
Lionsgate
One of the many issues with THE STRANGERS–CHAPTER 2 is that the ongoing franchise-ization of Bryan Bertino’s truly frightening 2008 original has undercut the creepy promise of the title. Four movies into the series, the masked trio of villains by now seem less, well, strange than familiar, and thus less scary. It didn’t help that last year’s THE STRANGERS–CHAPTER 1 was an almost verbatim replay of the first film, but the promise of the latest installment was that it would now strike out in a new direction and offer more variations (and backstory) on the theme. Instead, it takes material that justifies at most about 20 or 25 minutes of movie and stretches it out to 98.
Taking a cue from HALLOWEEN II, THE STRANGERS–CHAPTER 2 picks up right where its predecessor left off, with its heroine in Venus County Hospital in the wilds of Oregon. Maya (Madelaine Petsch) survived her stabbing at the Strangers’ hands but her fiancé Ryan (Froy Gutierrez) did not, though he does turn up in brief flashbacks littered throughout the running time. Poor Maya doesn’t know who to trust, which is understandable since the local sheriff is named Rotter, is played by perpetually sinister character actor Richard Brake and exchanges an ominous look with his deputy when Maya asks who the Strangers’ much-requested “Tamara” is.
Soon the Strangers–Scarecrow, Pinup Girl and Dollface–are chasing Maya through Venus County Hospital, whose hallways after dark are even more deserted than those of HALLOWEEN II’s Haddonfield Memorial. The entirety of STRANGERS–CHAPTER 2, in fact, is one long pursuit, through the woods and houses old and new. But the story has no forward momentum, just the same basic sequence repeated over and over again, and the suspense drains away early. A couple of potential saviors for Maya appear, but are dispatched before anything interesting can be done with them, though one of them does live long enough to say, “I’m here because of the lack of response by the sheriff’s department to all the murders in the area.” Around the midpoint, the filmmakers seem so bereft of fresh stuff for the Strangers to do that they stage a lengthy setpiece in which poor Maya is set upon by a CG wild boar, which comes across like a misguided homage to the infamous bear assault on Leonardo DiCaprio in THE REVENANT. (Side note: I caught the DiCaprio/Paul Thomas Anderson film ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER just before STRANGERS–CHAPTER 2, and it’s awesome. Go see it!)
Just as much violence is done to plot logic as it is to the characters; more than once, Maya wounds one of her potential murderers but doesn’t finish the job. For all its moments of brutality, little in THE STRANGERS–CHAPTER 2 is actually scary, and that, sadly, includes the Strangers themselves, since this entry abandons the initial unnerving premise of the killers literally attacking their victims where they live. Most crucially, with the reiteration of the ’08 film out of the way, the promise of delving into the motivations of the Strangers goes almost completely unfulfilled. There are feints at deeper themes, like a preacher overheard on radios in a couple of scenes, that aren’t explicated, and just a few flashbacks to a group of children that conclude with an awkward revelation regarding one of the franchise’s touchstone lines.
Toward the end, Maya once again asks why all this is happening, and is answered, “Does there have to be a why?” Uh, yeah there does, dude–that’s the reason we’re here. But THE STRANGERS–CHAPTER 2 provides so little in the way of explanations or any other satisfaction that with the trilogy closer on the way next year, even the most curious franchise fans have no reason to see it.
