Del and Mladen review ‘The Strangers: Chapter 2’

Image courtesy of Lionsgate.

“The Strangers: Chapter 2” Starring Madelaine Petsch, Gabriel Basso, Ema Horvath and others. Directed by Renny Harlin. 1 hour, 38 minutes. Rated R. Theatrical release.

Plot summary: After their car breaks down during a cross-country trip, Maya and her boyfriend, Ryan, are forced to overnight at an Airbnb in the remote woods. During the night, three masked strangers terrorize the couple, leaving Ryan dead and Maya severely injured. In “Chapter 2,” Maya awakens at a hospital. But all is not as it should be, with hospital staffers and law enforcement behaving strangely. Then, the masked murderers return, compelling Maya to flee into the woods where a new round of stalking commences.

Spoilers: Absolutely!

Del’s take

Mladen and I have been writing movie reviews since 2004 when we reviewed “The Host” for Brenda Shoffner’s Showcase at the Northwest Florida Daily News. By my count this review, “The Strangers: Chapter 2,” will be our 168^th foray into Movie Face-Off, as we call the body of our work. If I had the money I’ve spent watching movies with Mladen for Movie Face-Off, I could probably buy a lifetime supply of Preparation H. We don’t get paid, and as of this writing there are no ads on my website, where Movie Face-Off is now hosted. ( delstonejr.com )

Why do we do it? I’m pretty sure Mladen would agree we do it because we enjoy it. We love movies and we love seeing them in theaters. Movie theaters are one of the few remaining venues in America where you can rub shoulders with your fellow man. As Americans, with their infernal work-from-home, order-online mentality, slowly descend into whatever pathology disallows human contact and interpersonal communication, movie theaters remain a final bulwark against the impending decay of solitude. We encourage people to see movies in theaters. The screens are bigger, the sound is bigger – everything about the experience is bigger, sticky floors included.

This painful intro has a purpose. I want to make sure you understand Mladen and I really love movies because I’m about to do something I’ve done only once in our 21 years of writing movie reviews – give a failing score to a movie. If you choose to see “The Strangers: Part 2,” see it in a theater, though I’m not sure seeing it in a theater will save it. Never has a film so offended me with its calculated ineptness.

“The Strangers: Chapter 2” is fucking awful – maybe not “Plan 9 from Outer Space” awful but probably the worst movie you’ll see this year, which is strange because Renny Harlin is a pretty good director / producer. I thought “The Long Kiss Goodnight” and “Die Hard 2” were terrific films and he’s got a ton of other credits that are at least passable. Not so with “Chapter 2.” I actually apologized to Mladen afterward because it was I who recommended it.

I went into this movie thinking it was a sequel to 2008’s “The Strangers,” the Scott Speedman-Liv Tyler horror film about a young couple who are terrorized in their home by a trio of masked slashers. Wrong. It’s a “re-imagining” of the 2008 film and was preceded by “The Strangers: Chapter 1,” which I’ve never heard of. Incredibly, “The Strangers: Chapter 3” will be released next year.

It follows the same basic plot as the original but has been updated to account for changes (not advances) in technology – the couple is assaulted in a backwoods Airbnb, and everyone carries smart phones that clearly aren’t serviced by Starlink because they never have a signal.

Why Harlin decided to make a trilogy from the thin gruel of this story baffles me. There’s hardly enough going on here to make one movie, much less three, and boy does it show. Scenes are distended and padded to the point of absurdity, which screws up the pacing and gives unnecessary gravitas to inconsequential plot developments. The story is infested with dream sequences and flashbacks that annoy and distract the viewer. And then Harlin attempts to explain the inexplicable – why these people are doing these terrible things. That was the dubious “charm” of the original – good people had bad things done to them for no apparent reason. Here, of course, there is a reason – somebody was abused as a child so they grew up to become an axe murderer.

The acting was, in my opinion, as soul-draining as every other aspect of “Chapter 2,” but what’s an actor to do with such a crappy screenplay? The subordinate characters, who were supposed to project menace in a way that would prevent the viewer from identifying the real killers, were hammy to the point of self-parody. It was impossible to tell who was who, and so much of it relied on the viewer having seen “Chapter 1” to understand what was happening that it made no sense if they hadn’t. The characters behaved in such idiotic and incomprehensible ways that I couldn’t take anything I was seeing very seriously. Remember that scene from John Carpenter’s “Halloween” when Jamie Lee Curtis stabs Michael Myers in the eye with a butcher knife, then drops the knife next to his body instead of making sure the job was finished? Remember how stupid you thought she was? That’s pretty much everything in “Chapter 2.”

And then, to sit through an hour and a half of this crap only to discover there is no ending, that we must wait for “Chapter 3”?

Forget it. I don’t care. I’m offended.

Unsympathetic characters behaving in stupid ways in a trilogy that barely rates a single movie? No thanks. I won’t be spending my precious old-fart discounted ticket dollars on such a waste of time.

I’m giving “The Strangers: Chapter 2” an F. I’m all for seeing movies in a theater, and I do love movies, but this film smelled like 5-day-old chicken bones and I won’t make that mistake again.

If Mladen rates this anything higher than an F I’m going to ask him to draw a clock that reads 10:53 because his cognitive abilities are clearly in the shitter.

Mladen’s take

Yeah, what Del said. He’s correct about “The Strangers: Chapter 2,” except for one thing. This terrible, terrible … terrible movie is an A.

In between Del and I commenting out loud on the film – we were the only audience – Mystery Science Theater 3000-like, I tootled off on a journey of imagination and wonder and revelation. My trip of the mind was triggered by two of the film’s phenomena. They forced me to avoid dismissing the movie as tripe. I couldn’t help but relish its ridiculousness.

The first phenomenon was our serial killer-evading Maya’s beautiful hands and mesmerizing nail polish. It was the color of gold, always shimmering. I could care less about her but I sure as hell wanted her hands and their nail polish to survive.

The second was curiosity. As the movie progressed, I started to thinking about all the obstacles to efficient killing posed by the masks worn by the killers. Two of the Trump administration wannabe staffers donned porcelain doll masks. Very pixie. Very disarming. Both were women. The hulky man had a sack over his head. A bit scarier but a mask depicting Stephen Miller would’ve made me release my bowels.

Think about it. A doll mask, something that you may see on a child during Halloween, constricts your view. Its distance from your eyes would play all sorts of shadow‑n‑light tricks on 3D visual processing. So, how the hell does one of the Dollfaces put a crossbow arrow through an Oregon state police trooper’s eyeball at a billion paces at dusk shooting downhill? Huh? I say it’s impossible. The masks would also interfere with smell. Our frightened and irrational heroine Maya was bleeding so much all the time, you’d think at least one of the two Dollfaces would have detected a strong odor of iron in the air as they got closer to their quarry. But, no, the masks masked Maya’s draining blood supply even when killer and kill-ee were just a foot or two apart.

What about Sackhead? The rough burlap sat even farther from his eyes than the pixie masks of the girls. The eyeholes were ovoid and of varying size. Every time he moved his head, the sack would take a different shape, rendering a consistent view of his environment all fractals and glimpses. The sack also covered his ears. Sackhead must’ve suffered from diminished hearing. Jeez, bare-footed Maya, brain the motherfucker with a monkey wrench from the back as he walks past your hidey-hole. He would neither see nor hear you sneaking up.

In all three instances, doll masks and burlap sack, breathing under exertion would be very difficult. I can see Sackhead burying his long-handle axe into the morgue attendant’s abdomen and chest a couple of times with vigor. But, sustained penetration of ribs and sternum, not to mention bone-vibrating impact with the floor below the body, without proper oxygen intake would cause lactic acid build up. No? All of a sudden the implement would become as heavy as “The Strangers: Chapter 2” was light on coherence, direction, and scares. Don’t give me no adrenaline crap either. Dollfaces and Sackhead were used to killing. I doubt that they got all excited about it. Killing was their job. I sure as hell never get excited by my job. Why would they get excited about theirs?

The film’s most memorable features were Maya’s hands and nail polish. They had me all but delirious they were so perfect. Come on, the film’s director must’ve chosen the gold nail polish for a reason. I bet he chose the color after querying AI.

So it came to pass that I started rooting for the hands and the vibrant nail polish:

“Come on, Maya, now that you’ve self-stitched the deep, oozing knife wound in your abdomen, go to the creek to rinse those pretty hands and nail polish. Can’t have blood on them, can we? It dulls the gold finish.”

“Whoa, whoa, Maya, stop stabbing the killer pig that just gored and bit through one of your legs with so much determination and force. You’ll chip a nail. The polish might flake off. Stop.”

“Maya, Maya, slow down. Punching the window frame that won’t budge open risks damaging your hand. A bruised hand will not look as good with the gold nail polish.”

I’ll likely see “The Strangers: Chapter 3,” with or without Del. Can’t help it. I need to know. Does the gold nail polish live?

Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.