The Strangers: Chapter One (2024)
“All this has happened before, and it will all happen again.” Only this time we’re not talking about Disney’s Peter Pan but about The Strangers: Chapter One. A lot of people, myself included, thought this was a prequel to the 2008 Liv Tyler film of the same name, but no, it’s a remake, and not a terribly creative one at that.
The plot is simply this: Boyfriend and girlfriend Jeff and Maya are on their way to Portland, Oregon because Maya has a job interview with an architectural firm, and on the way they stop in a tiny town called Venus to have lunch at the local diner. When they go to leave, however, their SUV won’t start, so they leave it at the garage and stay at the one airBnB in town.
It’s all pretty idyllic at first, but it doesn’t take long before things start getting all creepy and mysterious. Really creepy and mysterious. A shadowy figure keeps showing up and asking for Tamara, and whenever Maya and Jeff tell them there’s no Tamara around, the person sidles away. Another creepy figure stares at Maya while she’s in the shower. There are jumpscares galore, of course, and after the first five or so they seem like desperation.
That’s the last of the relative tranquility. From there Jeff and Maya are stalked and tortured by three people in masks who seldom say anything. They’re out to get Jeff and Maya just because they’re around. We never find out who they are or why they like killing people. They’re just there.
The Strangers: Chapter One felt like a movie I had already seen before, and I’ve never seen the original Strangers movie. While I didn’t hate it, from start to finish it feels as if they’re trying to work in every possible horror cliche from the past fifty years or so. No, more like eighty or ninety.
And it doesn’t even present them well. The music always builds and the strings get higher and more abrasive when something’s about to happen. Everyone in town is a creeper, including the garage owner, who sidles up to the driver’s side to talk to Jeff. Even the kids are scary in a Children of the Corn kind of way. The movie does absolutely nothing with this.
That seems to be a thing all throughout. For instance, one of the killers uses an ax to chop through the bedroom door where Maya and Jeff are hiding, and instead of forcing himself into the room there’s a long beat and then he drifts off. What should have been a “Here’s Johnny!” kind of moment falls flat.
Strangers’ casting is pretty on point, with Madalaine Petsch being an especial highlight. She’s a little sassy, she’s romantic, and she has great chemistry with Ryan Bown as Jeff. She pretty much carries the movie even though she, like the rest of us couldn’t possibly predict what would happen next.
The only trope the movie doesn’t employ is a dream sequence, so horror fans can be thankful for that at least. Or maybe that’s being saved for Chapter Two, because there will be a Chapter Two. Heck, there already is. Three chapters in The Strangers have been filmed and are in post-production. Let’s hope it’s less of an exercise in Spot the Horror Cliche and more of an honest-to-goodness storyyline.
The Strangers: Chapter One is currently in theaters. Rated R.
My grade: D+
Principal Cast: Madalaine Petsch, Ryan Bown, Matus Lajcak, Olivia Kreutzova, Letizia Fabbri, Froy Gutierrez, Ben Cartwright, Stevee Davies, Richard Brake, Pedro Leandro, Ema Horvath, Janis Ahern, William Lee Ahern, Rafaella Biscayn, Pablo Sandstrom, Sara Freedland, Alexander Markland, Dominic Kotuc.
Directed by Renny Harlin.
Written by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland.