The Strangers : Chapter 1is as confusing as it is underwhelming . The film , an attempt to cash in in further on the success of director Bryan Bertino ’s 2008 repulsion hitThe Strangers , has been sold as the latest installment in a enfranchisement that has never amply capitalized on the success of its first entry .
Does that meanChapter 1is a continuation toThe Strangers ? Or a prequel ? Its statute title and the trailer ’s tagline ( “ Witness how the unknown became the stranger ” ) would suggest that it ’s the latter , but its admirer ’ decidedly mod smartphones and a passing mention ofAirbnbplace its story many year after its 2008 predecessor . Some may consider that nitpicking , but it bespeak to just how little thought seems to have run low into the concept and making ofThe Strangers : Chapter 1 .
There ’s a half - baked feeling to the movie that not only renders it largely uneffective , but also ready it palpate , at times , foully slothful . In fact , whether it ’s a sequel or a prequel does n’t matter because the film borrow so much from the original Strangers that it feels more like a remaking than a follow - up of any sort . While it save a few moments of genuine tenseness and dread , The Strangers : Chapter 1never comes close to replicating the disturbing magic of Bertino ’s breakout horror hit . The raw film polishes aside the unsteady , pugnacious - and - quick nature of that now - iconic , late 2000s rest home encroachment thriller and , in doing so , loses the intimate , grounded great power that makesThe Strangersstill so redoubtable to this day .
In what is one of its only major deviations from its 2008 predecessor , The Strangers : Chapter 1follows two lineament who are n’t on the verge of potentially breaking up with each other , but whose relationship seems stronger than ever . When the movie begins , Maya ( Madelaine Petsch ) and Ryan ( Froy Gutierrez ) are n’t sitting in the uncomfortable wake of a bomb marriage proposal , but playfully rule ways to kill meter as they near the end of a multiday drive to Oregon . Their journey strike an unexpected turn when Ryan takes a detour through an off - the - radar , little boondocks town and they afterwards find themselves stranded with a auto that wo n’t protrude .
WhereasThe Strangerswastes small time make its leads ’ straightforward circumstances , Chapter 1spends most of its first act predictably trap Ryan and Maya in a familiar horror movie billet . Unable to resume their drive , the two are forced to expend the night at an Airbnb in the middle of the woods , and it ’s only a matter of time before they ’re being stalked , tantalize , and attacked — like Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman ’s Kristen and James inThe Strangers — by three mysterious masked orca . Behind the camera , music director Renny Harlin pays court to multiple iconic moments fromChapter 1‘s parent film , while Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland pack their script to the brim with twists and detail that are also pulled directly from it .
Maya and Ryan ’s palpable love for each other impart a different shade of catastrophe to the upshot ofChapter 1 , but the thriller remain so slavishly devoted toThe unknown ‘ original social organization and plot that their relationship does n’t spay the flick all that much in the end . The film stretches out its killers ’ gradual invasion longer than its predecessor , and it ’s in the early stages ofChapter 1‘s second act that it pull off to find the time for entirely novel gags and instance of os - chilling tension . However , the moving-picture show ultimately stick to the same universal path asThe Strangersand borrow so many of that film ’s prominent dramatic pulsation that the tension it builds prior to Maya and Ryan ’s realization of their position inevitably dispel once you realize exactly how indebtedChapter 1is to a repulsion movie that come out over 15 years ago .
To make matter worse , The Strangers : Chapter 1doesn’t pull in off near as many of its biggest moments as well as the cinema that it steals so much from . Harlin , for instance , visually reveals the mien of the film ’s killers in Ryan and Maya ’s Airbnb with a quick dead reckoning of a mask intruder walking in front of the camera while Maya stands incognizant with her back to them . It ’s a much showier shot than the one that serves the exact same purpose inThe Strangers , in which a masked intruder wordlessly emerges in the apparition behind an incognizant Liv Tyler . Unfortunately , the more pronounced nature of the reveal do it considerably less venter - churning and quietly unsettling . The same is true of the moving-picture show itself , which abandons the live - in , handheld aesthetic ofThe Strangersin party favor of a cheap and less artful approach .
There are moments whenChapter 1delivers on the terrifying promise of its initial trailer . A segment early on when Maya is left alone to be unexpectedly stalked and terrorise by her oft - unseen attackers uses a series of well - calculated sound excogitation alternative and ominous tip of view gibe to create a sensory faculty of impending day of reckoning that shortly becomes suffocating . AlthoughThe Strangers : Chapter 1doesn’t have many memorable characters to tender and is slightly dragged down by Gutierrez ’s crocked functioning , Petsch gives an impressively committed , unrestrained spell as Maya that makes it gentle to take root for her — even when she ’s making error and illogical decisions that should get out most horror fans alternately express joy and wind their middle .
InThe Strangers : Chapter 1‘s closing minutes , the picture show ultimately labour itself and its franchise into comparatively new district . Its most interesting kink is cut short by a “ to be continued ” title card , though , which set up the releases of the two , already shot sequels thatChapter 1 , unluckily , does n’t earn enough goodwill to generate any excitation for . It ’s a movie that sum so little to what ’s already come before it that it leaves one confused why it was even made in the first station — let alone envisioned as the opening installation of a new trilogy . Whatever good ideasThe Strangers : Chapter 1might have had end up buried beneath a cumulation of reuse moments and images , most of which only serve to cue you how inferior it is to the photographic film that it borrows half of its title and far , far more from .
The Strangers : Chapter 1is now playing in theatre of operations .
