The Strangers: Chapter 1 Review

What was once excitement for this new trilogy has quickly become indifference. An issue with trilogies is expectations get set higher; when you don't start out with a bang, people begin to worry. Instead of providing a fresh perspective on the masked killers, we are given a complete and utter rehash of The Strangers. Beat for beat we follow the original story with similar characters and a similar setting. Overacting was on display from the entire cast, especially the townsfolk of Venus, Oregon. All human logic was thrown out the window when writing this script as our protagonists continually made questionable decisions as if they were trying not to survive.

Maya and Ryan had been together for five years, yet their relationship was not believable. I'm unsure if the writing given to them was just poor or if the chemistry wasn't there, but they were hard to root for. Why would Ryan not question the first stranger to knock on the door, and why would he leave Maya at the cabin to go get food? When he returns with food, Maya tells him she saw someone in the house, but of course he doesn't believe her. Another knock at the door and this time Ryan sees the stranger on the road. He chases her away but does nothing more. We've now had a complete stranger in a mask knock on the cabin door multiple times, yet our lovely couple does nothing. The stupidity gets ramped up once the threat is real. Side note -- how are these masked killers so stealthy? There were several moments in the film where one of the killers silently slipped through the back of a shot or through a hallway unnoticed. I understand there was music playing most of the night, but this an old creaky cabin; you're going to hear somebody enter the house. We even had a scene where a stranger sits in a rocking chair directly behind Maya while she plays piano, and then he vanishes out of thin air. These are normal human killers, not phantoms.

Ryan gets progressively moronic as he decides the best place to hide once escaping the cabin with Maya is in one of the side sheds. Hmmm. I wonder if they'll check there Ryan? It's all just so frustrating to see play out on the screen, and even though I give Ryan credit for finding a shotgun in the shed, he then proceeds to kill an innocent man with it on accident (the owner of the Airbnb). There is no reason these three strangers should have survived honestly, and they were less intimidating than usual. Anyways, eventually the couple is caught and tied up. They are both killed in the most anti climatic way possible by taking a mild stab to the gut. It's possible the director was attempting to show the inefficiency of first-time killers, but we still don't know how long the strangers have been killing at this point, so why are they so terrible at it?

Cops show up after the couple is killed and the killers escape into the woods to kill another day. The whole film was uneven and lacked a true sense of direction, but the strangest choice to me was the post-credits scene. We see that Maya is in a hospital bed and survived, and as she wakes up, we see the main killer next to her by the hospital bed. We receive no further explanation and transition with "to be continued" displayed on the screen. A post-credit scene is supposed to excite the audience and give a legitimately good cliffhanger. We didn't get that here.

The Strangers: Chapter 1 does nothing to expand the story and characters of this universe. The once terrifying, mysterious masked killers are now laughable and awful at killing. The gore and violence were minimal, and the tension found in The Strangers was not found here. I wish I could say this were better, but life is unfair.

4.1 / 10