Back in 2022, Finnish filmmaker Renny Harlin shot a brand new The Strangers trilogy all at once. The first, an outright remake, ended up being everything Bryan Bertino's infinitely more horrifying original is not. At the time, I pondered how Lionsgate's experiment could get any worse. Now that I've seen The Strangers - Chapter 2, I have my answers.
Frankly, Harlin's second take is a futile and stupid gesture. It provides us with everything we never needed to know about "The Strangers," in addition to adding random nonsense that doesn't fit. By rationalizing the irrational, all the horror has vanished. Writers Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland misunderstand everything about the devastating ambiguity at the core of Bertino's themes. Instead, we’re met with this inane need to provide a backstory that betrays the very meaning of The Strangers.
