Review: THE STRANGERS – CHAPTER 3 Offers a Trilogy Finale as Dull as the Other Entries
Well, at least they kept things consistent…?
It’s the end of the road for this reboot trilogy of The Strangers, which lives up to the promise of what came before. Which, of course, wasn’t much promise at all.
There’s no big time jump here or changing up anything big storywise, as The Strangers – Chapter 3 once more picks up right where the last one left off, essentially meaning these three films seemingly take place over the course of maybe three or four days. This may be a tighter timeline than Friday the 13th Part 2, 3 and 4!
The last film revealed the identity of one of the Strangers, Pin-Up Girl, to be local waitress Shelly (Ema Horvath), before she was killed by our heroine, Maya (Madelaine Petsch). Since most of what happens in these movies is Maya running from the Strangers, them catching up to her, then her escaping again, well, it’s soon enough time for her to get grabbed by them again. And given the ad campaign has leaned heavily into this aspect, I think it’s safe to bring up that the two remaining Strangers, Scarecrow and Dollface, begin to force Maya to wear their dead buddy’s mask, dragging her along as they carry out their deadly Strangers business.
After kicking off this new trilogy with a weak retread of 2008’s original The Strangers with Chapter 1, Chapter 2 barely felt like a movie at all, with almost zero plot except Maya being chased. That being the case, it wasn’t a high bar for Chapter 3 to feel like an improvement, and on that basic level, yes, this new movie is better than Chapter 2. There’s actually at least an attempt to introduce some new elements here, even if they’re done clumsily, as we see the Strangers seemingly attempting to indoctrinate Maya into their murderous ways.
