The Strangers: Chapter 2 Cuts Deep, Then Talks Too Much

The Strangers: Chapter 2

★ ★

The Strangers: Chapter 2 is a much more entertaining film than its predecessor. If you’re willing to turn off your brain, leave logic and reason at the concession counter, munch your popcorn and enjoy the ride, you might actually have a decent time. Unlike last year’s insufferable Chapter 1, this is almost a good movie. To my surprise, nearly half of it actually works.

It’s still not a very good movie. But it’s somewhat passable and a step in the right direction. Still, this is a planned trilogy, and we’re not trending well this far into the story. Perhaps some miracle will strike the horror genre and the third film will somehow tie everything together. I highly doubt it.

We’re already too little, too late.

Chapter 2 almost picks up right where the previous chapter ended, interrupted by an unnecessary flashback to a previous murder that doesn’t really tie into the events unfolding here, unless to show us these killers have killed before. We don’t need to know that; we’ve already seen the evildoers do some murdering. We need to move things along.

Madelaine Petsch as Maya on the run
© 2025 Lionsgate / Fifth Element

When the real story starts, Maya (Madelaine Petsch) is in the hospital recovering from injuries at the cabin where her boyfriend was gutted with a knife. It’s not long before the villains of Chapter 1 figure out she’s alive and head off to the hospital to finish the job. They’re known as The Strangers and they wear masks, one a scarecrow and two of them female porcelain dolls. They go by Scarecrow, Dollface and Pin-Up Girl. I hate to admit, I’m not really sure who each of them is without their mask. The film tries to show us. Maybe my cynicism from the last outing is to blame, because I just don’t care who they are.

And we’re not supposed to. This film tries to give motivation by showing us the childhood trauma of the trio of knife-wielding slashers. But director Renny Harlin seems to have ignored the downfall of the Rob Zombie debacle of the 2007 Halloween remake. The problem? He tried to give Michael Myers a backstory. They did the same with the 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Here they tried to make Freddy Krueger—a notorious child abuser—into a sympathetic villain. It watered down and cheapened the horror in both cases.

Scarecrow on the hunt
© 2025 Lionsgate / Fifth Element

This trio needs no backstory. Their premise stands alone—chilling in its randomness. “Why are you doing this?” a victim asks. A version of “Because you were home” is the cold, blunt response.

In a slasher film, the lack of the killer’s motivation is what makes it most terrifying.

But, I digress.

Maya flees from The Strangers, escaping one trap after another. She moves surprisingly well for someone stabbed in the gut just hours earlier—a reminder of why you need to turn your brain off to enjoy this film.

The movie is at its best when the focus is on Maya’s cat-and-mouse escapes from The Strangers. Had the film honed its focus simply on this, it could have salvaged a very capable horror outing. It’s in these raw moments the film was most entertaining.

But the focus on The Strangers’ backstory grinds any pacing and terror-fueled tension to a halt. The need to explain everything does to the story what the killers want to do to Maya. It kills it, dead to rights.

Maya hitches a ride
© 2025 Lionsgate / Fifth Element

Petsch can’t save this film, nor is it really her job to do so. Her character wasn’t well written in the previous outing, but here she’s playing the woman on the run. Without the goofy extras stuffed in for whatever reason, she manages to bring a sympathetic character to Maya – no small feat in a film like this.

Toward the end, the film gives away the last vestige of mystery: an answer to the question that should never be answered. Who is this Tamara that The Strangers keep asking about when they knock on the door of the people they’re about to kill? Watch to the end to find out.

If you make it to the end, you’ll be painfully aware this movie has no conclusion. It simply closes with the title card, white letters on a black screen that read, “To be continued.”

Ugh. Really? Why?

Because we keep showing up for this stuff.