‘The Strangers: Chapter 3’ Film Review: Even The Stabbing Feels Perfunctory in Weak Wrap to Horror Trilogy
Those stalwarts holding out stubborn hope that Renny Harlin’s “Strangers” trilogy would end with more bang than whimper might choose the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” as their theme song after sitting through “The Strangers: Chapter 3.” Though it’s actually another vintage FM rock-radio classic, the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin,” that provides the arguable high point here — if only because its use at a climactic moment provides the viewer a brief goosing of unintentional humor.
Otherwise, this is an unconscionably lazy piece of work, the kind of movie that makes you marvel how people will put months of work into creating a feature film whose script seems to have been written in a few hours’ uninspired haste. If the two prior installments felt thin, to say the least, there was still the faith that it all had to be heading somewhere. No. 3, however, simply underlines that there were never enough ideas on tap to sustain more than a single episode, and a mediocre one at that. Bryan Bertino’s eerie 2008 original and Johannes Robert’s more conventional but effective 2018 “The Strangers: Prey at Night” now look positively masterful alongside these three tie-in footnotes, with whom they have almost no overlap save a trio of roaming masked killers.
Last fall’s middle part — by default, the best of this recent lot — left heroine Maya (Madelaine Petsch) battered but alive in the Oregon hamlet of Venus, where everyone seems willing to sacrifice unlucky visitors to the bloodthirsty throuple. Her boyfriend (Froy Gutierrez) is dead, as well as several others, but she has just managed to terminate the homicidal spree of Pin-Up aka Shelly (Ema Horvath). That still leaves a furiously mourning Scarecrow and remaining female henchperson Dollface to hunt down their wounded quarry. Maya has learned by now to trust no locals, least of all aptly-named Sheriff Rotter (Richard Brake). She escapes him after a tense brief encounter with his son Gregory (Gabriel Basso), the likely face behind Scarecrow’s hood. But her travails are hardly over, even as a sibling is driving to the attempted rescue from Portland.
Randomly tossed-in flashbacks offer backstory so rote, you might yearn for the 2008 film’s resistance to any explication whatsoever. Turns out Scarecrow and Pin-Up were bad kids, as in homicidal ones…just cuz. Residents decided to let them do their thing, so long as they restricted such activities to out-of-towners. That’s it — that’s the whole “mystery.” (As one short-lived figure nonsensically shrugs, this stuff is just what happens in a “fucked-up small town.”) There’s also a flashback to how they eventually acquired a third playmate.
If you’re going to suggest a smidgen of psychological insight to ground screen violence, it’s good to include some actual psychology, and character detail. But these figures are just blanks: Smirking children, smirking adults, bearing knives and axes. Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland’s screenplay doesn’t make the faintest attempt at etching motivation, beyond a general understanding that killers gonna kill. After all, this is a horror movie.
Yet nobody seems to actually care about making a horror movie. Harlin does stage a decent prologue (yet another flashback), which is routine in content but does provide one solid jump scare. Alas, for its remaining 75 minutes or so — excluding nearly ten minutes of final-credits crawl — “Chapter 3” barely manifests interest in its own by-numbers mayhem. Dramatic personae (including new arrivals played by Rachel Shenton, George Young and Miles Yekinni) are introduced in the most desultory fashion, then offed likewise.
Last time around, the director managed a couple decent setpieces. Here, he appears to have given up. The performers do the best they can under the circumstances, but they’re operating in a vacuum where the filmmakers seem too unengaged to bother with building suspense, or even maintaining basic credibility. Conviction is entirely lacking. So, too, is any sense of fun. Just about the only thing that works of its own accord are shots in which those creepily old-fashioned masks get forefronted. They still cast a disquieting spell, as they first did 18 years ago, until inevitably that also goes flat.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with Jose David Montero’s cinematography, the sometimes atmospheric locations (like its predecessors, “3” was primarily shot in Slovakia), or Justin Burnett and Oscar Senen’s original score. All those factors and more might’ve heightened any scary movie that was at least making an effort. But in the end, this entire trilogy has found no raison d’etre, beyond the basic commercial one. (Which may also have failed: This critic was the lone customer at the opening-day multiplex screening.) It stretches material that wouldn’t overfill 90 minutes to 4.5 hours, arriving at no worthwhile destination and conveying scant excitement en route. It aims low…and still bunts.
Otherwise, this is an unconscionably lazy piece of work, the kind of movie that makes you marvel how people will put months of work into creating a feature film whose script seems to have been written in a few hours’ uninspired haste. If the two prior installments felt thin, to say the least, there was still the faith that it all had to be heading somewhere. No. 3, however, simply underlines that there were never enough ideas on tap to sustain more than a single episode, and a mediocre one at that. Bryan Bertino’s eerie 2008 original and Johannes Robert’s more conventional but effective 2018 “The Strangers: Prey at Night” now look positively masterful alongside these three tie-in footnotes, with whom they have almost no overlap save a trio of roaming masked killers.
Last fall’s middle part — by default, the best of this recent lot — left heroine Maya (Madelaine Petsch) battered but alive in the Oregon hamlet of Venus, where everyone seems willing to sacrifice unlucky visitors to the bloodthirsty throuple. Her boyfriend (Froy Gutierrez) is dead, as well as several others, but she has just managed to terminate the homicidal spree of Pin-Up aka Shelly (Ema Horvath). That still leaves a furiously mourning Scarecrow and remaining female henchperson Dollface to hunt down their wounded quarry. Maya has learned by now to trust no locals, least of all aptly-named Sheriff Rotter (Richard Brake). She escapes him after a tense brief encounter with his son Gregory (Gabriel Basso), the likely face behind Scarecrow’s hood. But her travails are hardly over, even as a sibling is driving to the attempted rescue from Portland.
Randomly tossed-in flashbacks offer backstory so rote, you might yearn for the 2008 film’s resistance to any explication whatsoever. Turns out Scarecrow and Pin-Up were bad kids, as in homicidal ones…just cuz. Residents decided to let them do their thing, so long as they restricted such activities to out-of-towners. That’s it — that’s the whole “mystery.” (As one short-lived figure nonsensically shrugs, this stuff is just what happens in a “fucked-up small town.”) There’s also a flashback to how they eventually acquired a third playmate.
If you’re going to suggest a smidgen of psychological insight to ground screen violence, it’s good to include some actual psychology, and character detail. But these figures are just blanks: Smirking children, smirking adults, bearing knives and axes. Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland’s screenplay doesn’t make the faintest attempt at etching motivation, beyond a general understanding that killers gonna kill. After all, this is a horror movie.
Yet nobody seems to actually care about making a horror movie. Harlin does stage a decent prologue (yet another flashback), which is routine in content but does provide one solid jump scare. Alas, for its remaining 75 minutes or so — excluding nearly ten minutes of final-credits crawl — “Chapter 3” barely manifests interest in its own by-numbers mayhem. Dramatic personae (including new arrivals played by Rachel Shenton, George Young and Miles Yekinni) are introduced in the most desultory fashion, then offed likewise.
Last time around, the director managed a couple decent setpieces. Here, he appears to have given up. The performers do the best they can under the circumstances, but they’re operating in a vacuum where the filmmakers seem too unengaged to bother with building suspense, or even maintaining basic credibility. Conviction is entirely lacking. So, too, is any sense of fun. Just about the only thing that works of its own accord are shots in which those creepily old-fashioned masks get forefronted. They still cast a disquieting spell, as they first did 18 years ago, until inevitably that also goes flat.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with Jose David Montero’s cinematography, the sometimes atmospheric locations (like its predecessors, “3” was primarily shot in Slovakia), or Justin Burnett and Oscar Senen’s original score. All those factors and more might’ve heightened any scary movie that was at least making an effort. But in the end, this entire trilogy has found no raison d’etre, beyond the basic commercial one. (Which may also have failed: This critic was the lone customer at the opening-day multiplex screening.) It stretches material that wouldn’t overfill 90 minutes to 4.5 hours, arriving at no worthwhile destination and conveying scant excitement en route. It aims low…and still bunts.