The Strangers: Chapter 2

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At this point, it's safe to say that when it comes to horror series, 'The Strangers' is about the furthest from my favourite as any of them get. However, I'm here to offer my opinions on the good and the bad, and in all honesty, this wasn't quite as bad as I had expected going in. However, don't get me wrong, the movie is still pretty bad, loaded with cliches, full of scenes that are either confusing or don't make any sense, and I'd once again point to this as, if anything, an entry-level slasher film at best. 

We also see the film drawing from several elements we've seen before, such as 'Halloween II' and its hospital survival setting, while picking up where the last one left off. With all of this criticism coming right out of the gate, I'm sure you're all wondering what that bit about it not being as bad as I had expected is all about. I will get to it, but for now, we'll flash back to the last film, which ends with the lead from the previous movie, Maya (Madelaine Petsch), hospitalized after the events, and in a post-credit scene, waking up next to "Scarecrow" (Matúš Lajčák), indicating that there would be a second chapter.

As the film begins, we notice that the post-credit scene appears to have been a dream. Still, it's not long before the dream comes true, as the characters who have become known as "Scarecrow", "Dollface" and "Pinup Girl" discover Maya's still alive and go to the hospital to seek her out, evidently with no one but two people on the job that night, and patients who are sleeping through the whole debacle, and that's not the only bit of nonsense we get throughout the film. Meanwhile, the film takes the time to get the community of Venus' varying opinions on what happened to Maya and her now-executed boyfriend, Ryan (Froy Gutierrez).

The film also opens with a bit of text showing some figures involving murder in the United States, and the fact that so many of these murders came at the hands of strangers, surprising no one. However, I believe the idea behind the Venus community and how they talk, which is usually, in a word, "fishy," has to do with the idea of whether or not we can trust anyone, and guessing who among them has a dark side and who doesn't. Even Maya gets stuck with confusion at the matter here, and I can give the film some credit for this - except a handful of these characters have nothing to do with anything, so it's a neat idea that falls apart.

Back to the plot, however, when the three masked strangers reach the Venus Hospital to seek out Maya and finish the job, that's when Maya channels her inner "final girl" (perhaps most famous and accepted of all horror tropes) and attempts to escape the hospital and survive her attackers. It's actually not a terrible concept, trying to make Maya someone who can hold her own and become a new Scream Queen, but she may have hit the mark with a better script, as the movie has her do a lot of stuff that I didn't feel worked quite right. For example, at one point, she returns to the scene of the crime she survived while still being hunted.

I suppose the idea they had here, namely with her returning to the cabin where she got stabbed, was to have her face her fears and transform into a badass, but I felt there was enough to work with when we see her survival skills in action. But then again, she does light a bonfire while she's surviving a hunt, which, to me, seems dumb. Anyway, that's really all the film amounts to - Maya surviving her attackers. In contrast, the film occasionally flashes back to "Scarecrow" and "Pinup Girl" as children, offering a brief origin story. Ultimately, it's nothing special or surprising, and it's easy to shrug off.

'The Strangers' continues to be among the low-end of horror from my perspective. Even when it tries to do something a little different, it's never enough because it doesn't really bring anything new. I like the concept of mistrust here, particularly the idea of Maya becoming a badass survivor and the notion of a flashback villain origin story; however, none of it is well-executed. All in all, this felt like a film that had some of the right pieces to be at least decent, but it falls apart in specific moments, which halfway insult the audience. To no one's surprise, despite a few things I can ever so slightly forgive, it's yet another dud in the series.

2/5

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