‘The Strangers: Chapter 3’ Review – Meandering Trilogy Experiment Finally Reaches Its End
The bizarre experiment that is The Strangers reboot trilogy has finally reached its end. Madelaine Petsch’s exhausted final girl Maya has been on the run for one night of grueling hell, stretched far too thin across three separate films. However, instead of a full circle reckoning, The Strangers: Chapter 3 crawls toward its confused conclusion. […]
The bizarre experiment that is The Strangers reboot trilogy has finally reached its end. Madelaine Petsch’s exhausted final girl Maya has been on the run for one night of grueling hell, stretched far too thin across three separate films. However, instead of a full circle reckoning, The Strangers: Chapter 3 crawls toward its confused conclusion.
The teases of Venus, Oregon’s murderous underbelly, back in the first installment, finally get pushed closer to the forefront, though with zero new revelations that foreshadowed clues hadn’t already indicated. That means that it’s more spinning wheels as Maya continues her attempts to evade the clutches of the town’s most sadistic masked residents, including the least surprising reveal that Richard Brake’s Sheriff Rotter is not only in on it, but an orchestrator of the chaos.
His motive factors into the murky backstory behind the masked killers and their slaygrounds, a continued dispelling of mystery that robs the film of tension. Not helping is that director Renny Harlin, working from the behemoth screenplay by Alan R. Cohen & Alan Freedland, maintains laser focus on Maya’s survival bid and deteriorating mental state amidst the constant barrage of attackers.
