Movie Review: The Strangers: Chapter 3

Upon reaching its conclusion this past weekend, I can now declare that the Renny Harlin-helmed trilogy reboot reminds me of this incredible scene from Step Brothers. For the first two films, I was onboard with the vision. Chapter 1 is a spirited enough remake of the 2008 original while Chapter 2 is a fun extended chase sequence that does a pretty decent job of maintaining suspense by throwing pretty much non-step peril at its wounded heroine Maya (Madelaine Petsch-who proves her worth as a scream queen with her strong commitment to heavy breathing, crying and screaming) as she tries to escape the trio of serial killers that are hellbent on finishing what they started in the first film. When Harlin's endgame for this story finally comes into focus in Chapter 3, the whole idea of a trilogy centered around expanding the universe of The Strangers was suddenly rendered completely pointless.

If I didn't know that principal photography for the whole trilogy was done simultaneously, I would've assumed that Chapter 3 was improvised under extreme duress. Nobody involved with this production seems to have any fuckin idea how they're going to land the plane they've been flying around in for over 3 hours at this point, which leads to a true masterclass in confused filmmaking.

 Additional lore dumps for the serial killers formerly known as "The Strangers" are clumsily deployed at various points of the movie in order to provide a window into why they do what they do and how their relationships with one another formed. Petsch gets hung out to dry as the story concocts, abandons and then eventually returns to a revenge arc that is so thinly sketched that the final confrontation carries the emotional catharsis of a yawn. The ending is so abrupt and absurd that I'm still in disbelief that this was the note they decided to end an entire series of movies on. If this was their best attempt at wrapping up this story, I don't even want to think about what their worst would look like.

While Harlin is well past the days where he was delivering solid popcorn movies (Cliffhanger, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Die Hard 2) every couple of years, the first two films were directed competently enough where I started to question why he had been relegated to the minor leagues of Hollywood since the mid-2000's. The Strangers: Chapter 3 (along with his horrendous 2024 Aaron Eckhart-led action movie The Bricklayer) no longer has me wondering how that happened and it's pretty safe to say that he won't be getting called up to the big leagues again anytime soon after churning out a trilogy of films that ultimately proved to have an approval rating that's in line with gas station sushi.

Grade: D