The Strangers: Chapter 2 was released to the general public on Sept. 26 and hit the ground with a thud.

With a whopping 4.9/10 on IMDb and an 18% on Rotten Tomatoes, fans are left disappointed and confused about where the franchise is going and what kind of storyline the writers are trying to implement. 

After surviving the events of The Strangers: Chapter 1, Maya Lucas (Madelaine Petsch) begins her road to recovery in the hospital. To provide a little context for the second film, we must first have a small recap of the first. In the small town of Venus, Oregon, Maya and Ryan Perez (Froy Gutierrez) find themselves stranded when their car breaks down. They hitch a ride to housing for the night and end up staying in a reclusive Airbnb in the woods. 

As they settle in for the night, a stranger knocks on their door and inquires if someone by the name ‘Tamara’ is there. They tell her no and send her back out into the night.  

This proves to be a mistake as the night progresses, and they find themselves hunted by three masked strangers. The interesting charm in the first movie is that they give their reasoning for the couple being targets. When asked, “Why are you doing this to us?” one of the killers provides the chilling response, “Because you were home.”

This provides the viewer with an overwhelming feeling of dread when leaving this movie because of just how realistic it is. The senselessness of violence is a very real possibility, and the movie does a phenomenal job at representing that. The first chapter may have a low ranking, but it could have been a great standalone movie if the killers had actually killed both Maya and Ryan. As you could imagine, because this article is being written, neither protagonist dies. 

Maya finds herself in the local hospital waiting for a transport to Portland. Sheriffs take her statements on the killers and pass them off as if she’s exhausted or had too much blood loss. But she managed to have an encounter with the only killers in town that haven’t been caught for years. They are even regarded by other residents of the town later on in the movie as a hoax or a myth. 

The fatal flaw with these particular cops knowing about her surviving the encounter is they air out her dirty laundry in the middle of a crowded cafe. They make it known by accident that she’s still alive and inadvertently puts her right back in the line of danger.

From that moment forward, the killers are back on the hunt to settle their kill. After all, she is allegedly the only one that has ever lived to tell the tale. This trope felt overdone and brought nothing new to the table in terms of the general franchise. 

There are multiple shots throughout the movie that are well-done, but one in particular stuck out to Emma Hubbard, a freshman pre-vet major at the University of Tennessee at Martin, who has a love for horror movies.

“My favorite scene was when the male killer put his axe through the door, then reached in and grabbed her hair,” she said. “She pulled away and let him rip out a chunk of hair. You don’t see people really use their brains in horror movies, so this was a nice change of pace.”

There were multiple good scenes in the movie that up the ranking for me, but the overwhelming amount of poor choices keep that ranking low. One scene in particular was with the hog in the woods. It lasted much too long and felt awkward after watching her be knocked over a couple of times by it. After she attacked it, the hog just lay there and took its final breaths for what felt like five minutes. It almost felt like I was intruding on its personal space the longer the scene drug out. 

Another really awful part of this movie was some of the kills. A nurse is killed offscreen in the beginning and brings you to wonder where everyone else is in this hospital. Every time the protagonist acquires a vehicle, it is wrecked, or the original driver is killed. This felt dreadfully overdone in this movie and happened one too many times. These out of the way kills became reminiscent of the early Wrong Turn films, and not in the good way. 

The only saving grace this movie had was the use of backstory throughout. It was wonderful foreshadowing for the death of the pin-up killer but also left you heartbroken. This movie leaves you on a cliffhanger, but it’s worth a watch if you have the time and seven dollars to spend. 

I wouldn’t recommend watching it as a standalone. By the way, who’s at the door at this time of night? 

Grade: 3/10