Photo via usmagazine.com
By Keith Walther | Rose Law Group Reporter
Here we go again with the latest installment of a book nobody wants to experience in the first place. “The Strangers: Chapter 2” is the horror sequel to last year’s contender for worst film of the year. Unsurprisingly, it’s another horrendously bad film that somehow surpasses its predecessor to become one of this year’s worst motion pictures.
After surviving the brutal attack at an Airbnb in Oregon that left her boyfriend dead, Maya (Madelaine Petsch) is recovering in the local hospital. However, she’s not out of the woods yet, because the masked killers don’t like leaving behind survivors. When they somehow overtake the hospital to continue their bloodthirsty hunt, Maya escapes and runs right back into the woods she fled in the first place.
Unable to trust the locals, because they all behave exceedingly strangely, Maya must rely on herself to patch up her increasing wounds and get out of harms way. The murderous trio begin slaying everyone in their path as they close in on Maya without any hint of police activity or concern of course. Dealing with axe and knife wielding maniacs, the possibility of bleeding out, and even monstrous oversized wild boars (you heard that correctly), survival seems increasingly unlikely.
Just like the first chapter, this sequel suffers from the lazy and ineffectual direction from Renny Harlin, who filmed all three chapters simultaneously. From character stupidity and lack of survival instinct to more logic holes than a miniature golf course, he continues to offer no reasons to endure this franchise. How many times can the main character run herself into a dead end, hiding in a ridiculous location like a morgue drawer on top of her dead boyfriend, and just before the killers find her, they get distracted and apparently forget they had her cornered? Even one time would be too much, but Renny goes through this exercise multiple times, making it more predictable with each occurrence. Then there’s the fact that the antagonists seemingly have unlimited tech skills to jam cell phones whenever they’re close and simultaneously lock all exits at a hospital. All this implausible nonsense effectively strips the film of any semblance of horror and suspense.
As if this director became tired of the cat and mouse routine with the killers, he inexplicably throws in a scene of a giant, mutated CGI boar with a hankering for human flesh. This boar mauls the main character to the point that she should have been shredded but is still able to walk away under her own power in ridiculous fashion. The special effects are painfully inadequate that even the R.O.U.S. from “The Princess Bride” looked more menacing.
Renny attempts to build some kind of backstory for the murderers with forced flashback sequences showing two of the three as a couple of messed up children who delight in providing violent pain to animals and other children. Apparently, Renny either forgot or simply didn’t want to expend the effort to give a backstory to the third killer. The only positive takeaway from these silly scenes is viewers are finally clued in to where the famous line “is Tamara there?” originates.
Once again, Madelaine Petsch does what she can to elevate a poorly written script, but even her performance starts to become tired. She commendably instills a subtle amount of understandable paranoia and PTSD into her character resulting from the first movie’s trauma, but her constant groaning and wincing is comically overboard. She might as well have been announcing her presence to the killers with a marching band behind her. The rest of the cast’s oddly inhuman portrayals are absurdly unrealistic, making their characters almost alien in nature.
After this latest installment, it is clear the book needs to be closed on this franchise. “The Strangers: Chapter 2” tramples on the grave of the original as it serves up a formulaic approach that offers absolutely nothing you haven’t seen before. The fact that there’s still a third chapter yet to release is enough to make the most committed of horror fans to hang their head in fatigued disappointment.
This movie earns:
