Renny Harlin Addresses ‘The Strangers: Chapter 2’ Reshoots Based On ‘Chapter 1’ Reactions

At The Strangers: Chapter 2 panel at San Diego Comic-Con, Renny Harlin addressed the reshoots the film underwent — although the director prefers to call them “enhancements.”

“It’s purely from listening to the audience. The first movie came out, and we got a lot of feedback from the fans and regular moviegoers,” Harlin told the crowd.

“We realized that, while we had crafted this four-and-a-half hour movie that we had broken into three chapters, there was definitely room for learning from the audience experience and listening to the fact that the audience was interested in some things that we were not exploring enough yet.

“One of those is the fact that people wanted to know more about the Strangers. We are not saying what their names are and where they live and if they like lasagna,” he smiles.

“But we are showing some glimpses of their history in the movie, which I think deepens those characters, makes them more interesting — but doesn’t take anything away from the fact that these are real people, they could be anywhere around us, and the killings are totally random.”

Harlin continues, “To be able to go back and explore those things that you couldn’t do before and have a little more time with your actors and the visuals that you want to create and the kind of scares you realize really work well and so on, it’s an incredible privilege for a director.”

He concludes, “I don’t call it reshoots at all, ’cause that’s not what it was about. It was about adding and enhancing the experience.”