‘The Strangers: Chapter 2’ Review: A Pointless, Punishing Slog

There will likely not be a more pointless film this year than director Renny Harlin’s The Strangers: Chapter 2, a horror movie whose lugubrious pace is matched by its numbing, shambling narrative. The first in a rebooted trilogy of films based on Bryan Bertino’s 2008 original, The Strangers: Chapter 1 wasn’t breaking any new ground. The sequel sinks further into banal mediocrity, not giving audiences the decency of being even overtly bad. Instead, it’s a punishing slog that feels more like a side quest than a second installment of a big studio franchise, and it makes the trilogy’s first chapter seem like a masterpiece by comparison.

What makes The Strangers: Chapter 2 so frustrating is that it feels almost purposefully designed to waste time, treading water as if it knows it’s a series already drowning. Viewers catch up with Maya (Madelaine Petsch) after she narrowly survives an attack from the titular Strangers. She laments the death of her fiancé, Ryan (Froy Gutierrez), who was murdered by the knife-wielding killers. Maya is evidently still in her fight-or-flight state, and becomes suspicious of everyone around her, from the town’s sheriff (Richard Brake) to the medical workers who are facilitating her healing. Her suspicions are cruelly rewarded as the three Strangers wearing scarecrow, doll face and pin-up girl masks break into the hospital and attempt to finish her off. She escapes, with the trio in pursuit.

If you’re curious as to why there’s not more to the plot, that’s because The Strangers: Chapter 2 never changes its formula. There’s an almost liturgical call-and-response dynamic, as Maya escapes from one situation, feebly hides, is found by the Strangers and the process repeats. If it’s not old the first three times, it will be by the seventh, and the only excitement is seeing the little novelty director Renny Harlin and screenwriters Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland wring out of each new setting. In one tense scene, Maya fights a wild boar; it’s the most random and exciting part of the movie, purely because it’s so unexpected. It also has a sense of creative urgency: Cinematographer José David Montero shoots it from the perspective of the hog, The Revenant style, as if the camera is the horns and jaws gouging Maya’s battered legs.

It’s not that repetitive or familiar set-ups in and of themselves are the problem. Nor do they always have to be novel — cinema is replete with slashers that thrill while sticking to a formula. The problem with The Strangers: Chapter 2 is that it fails to recapture even an iota of the same suspense. There’s a sequence where Maya, after leaving her hospital bed, finds her way into an abandoned wing of the building. She opens all the curtains to the other beds, finds no secure hiding place, and eventually picks a random bed and hides in it. When the masked Stranger comes in, he does the exact same thing, and to no one’s surprise, when he opens the curtain where Maya is hiding, he finds her. Throughout this ordeal, there are no shifts in camera or focus back to Maya to showcase her fear, which might have given the scene some tension. Instead, we see essentially the same “version” of an event playing out multiple times with different characters, and it all leads to the expected outcome.

When all else fails, Petsch delivers an embodied performance that’s far better than the film around her. It’s a shame that her commitment, which is felt through the screen as she tussles in the wilderness and drives while wounded, is squandered around a premise that can’t provide an adequate reason for all of her suffering. Why are the Strangers after her? What’s this all leading to? What’s the end goal? Films don’t have to always give answers or saddle themselves with exposition. Even if a film’s whole point is that the violence in this world can be senseless, cruel and random, viewers don’t need a senseless, cruel and random film — at least in aesthetic and form — to prove that point. The Strangers: Chapter 2 is far too content with replaying hide and seek with its central character, and by the end of the film, the narrative hasn’t progressed from when it first started.

There’s a sequence where, after Maya escapes from the Strangers, she attempts to stitch her wounds with a medical kit she swiped from the hospital. We hear each of her screams as the needle pierces her flesh and closes a part of her gash. It’s the equivalent of watching this film, a painful, repetitive sequence that stretches out over a long period of time. In many ways, though, Maya was more fortunate. Her stitching ordeal lasted only a minute or so, but for those who watch The Strangers: Chapter 2, they’ll have 98 minutes to endure.