The Strangers: Chapter 2

The Strangers: Chapter 2
Starring Madelaine Petsch, Gabriel Basso, Ema Horvath, Rachel Shenton
Directed by Renny Harlan

In 2008's "The Strangers," a young couple finds themselves under attack from three masked intruders who only chose them because "they were home." The movie was viscerally terrifying due to its premise, lack of music, and scares that felt natural. The sequel wasn't as great but still had some decent moments, and then director Renny Harlan decided to reboot the franchise by making a three-chapter movie centering on Maya, a survivor of the Strangers who endures their stalking. Chapter 1 came out last year and is essentially the Temu version of the original, a nearly shot-for-shot remake with two less-capable actors and jump scares that aren't earned, but groaned. There wasn't much hope for the second chapter, and to that end the movie delivered - it was a snoozefest, a boring meddling middle child movie that doesn't advance the story in any specific way but just exists to serve as a bridge between the first and third chapters.

When the Strangers kill Maya's fiance Ryan and left Maya (Madeleine Petsch) for dead, she survives and wakes up in the local hospital. That night she realizes no one else is in the hospital and discovers that the Strangers have returned to finish the job, so she goes on the run to find a way out of the town - but every person she meets along the way could be one of the masked Strangers who wish her dead.

Middle movies of a trilogy can be exceptional in their own right. "The Two Towers," "X-Men: Days of Future Past," "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," "The Empire Strikes Back," and many more prove that the middle movie doesn't have to exist solely to advance the story to the third, but stand on its own merits. "The Strangers: Chapter 2" does no such thing. It's essentially 98 minutes of Maya running around in the woods, an abandoned hospital and other places in town while the Strangers have some supernatural abilities to track her down.

There's something in movies known as plot armor, which exists for the hero to survive odds that would've killed a normal person. Maya has so much armor she might as well be a medieval knight, as she wanders the streets and woods barefoot (talk about Lego nightmares) and is enduring the wounds from the Strangers attack in the first film, as well as all she endures this time around (including mauled by a terribly CGI-rendered wild boar that made me laugh out loud in the theater - thankfully I was the only one there). Yet despite everything, she runs around like nothing's happened, until she's limping, then running, then limping, like the editor forgot that she's supposed to be limping the entire time. 

As for the plot...there is none. It's Maya trying to survive in a town that seemingly follows Haddonfield's path from the original "Halloween II" when Maya wakes up in the hospital alone, a'la Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie Strode, and finds the hospital totally abandoned. No patients, no nurses or doctors, no one - how does this happen? Are there hospitals where they close up shop for the night? It'd make sense if the entire town was in on the game, but there's only hints of it that never come to fruition. 

It would've made sense of the town in the movie had some supernatural element to it where you couldn't escape, but at any point Maya could've found a car, or someone to drive her out of town, or simply just walked down the road to freedom, but she doesn't do any of that. Any car she finds she can't drive worth crap, she sees anyone trying to help her as someone who could be a Stranger, and she meanders her way through the town before inexplicably ending up back at the scene of the crime, where even more inexplicably there's someone there who is ready to help her, but the scene is so stupid because when she gets into his car, he stands by the door as if to wait for his cue to get an arrow in the eye - which eventually happens. 

Madeleine Petsch should be admired for her physical performance and all she endures in the movie (especially the barefoot walking), but that's a small consideration to an otherwise completely dull, lifeless, cash-grap outing that trudges its way to the final moment that opens up the third chapter - and I for one can't wait for this story to end, not because it's great, but because it's horrible.

The Score: D-