{"id":156695,"date":"2025-09-24T02:26:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T02:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/156695\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T02:26:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T02:26:07","slug":"the-strangers-chapter-2-review-stalk-run-rinse-repeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/156695\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Strangers: Chapter 2’ Review: Stalk, Run, Rinse, Repeat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Renny Harlin\u2019s The Strangers: Chapter 2 picks up right where the first part<\/a> left off, with Maya (Madelaine Petsch) still stranded in the rural town of Venus, Oregon, albeit now in the hospital after surviving her grisly encounter with the titular villains that left her boyfriend dead. Mostly notable for its distracting resemblance to Rick Rosenthal\u2019s Halloween II, Chapter 2 suggests for a while a needlessly extended epilogue to the first film.<\/p>\n

Once Maya realizes that the masked killers have followed her to the hospital to finish the job, she spends the first act of the film trying to exit the seemingly abandoned building. Instead of utilizing this environment for a fresh spin on the peek-a-boo games that the Strangers are known for, the filmmakers stage the action in a tediously perfunctory manner. Maya finds a room to hide in, one of the Strangers slowly traipses in, and Maya knocks something over or breathes too loudly and promptly has to flee to another hiding place. Rinse and repeat.<\/p>\n

Maya does escape from the hospital, but the film\u2019s m.o. remains unchanged as she frantically runs around Venus looking for help, the Strangers always somehow one step behind her. If nothing else, Maya is a resilient final girl, with Petsch committing herself to the physicality of her character\u2019s ordeal, most notably when Maya sews up her own wounds and goes mano a mano with a boar in a scene that comes off like a low-rent version of The Revenant<\/a>\u2019s bear attack.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the ease with which the Strangers kill off those who cross Maya\u2019s path ultimately makes her ability to persist seem less like ingenuity and more like a means of padding out the film\u2019s running time. Perhaps this drawn-out cat-and-mouse game is all a deliberate ploy by the Strangers to further antagonize Maya. Whatever the case, the chilling arbitrariness of the Strangers\u2019 actions, a trademark of this franchise that Chapter 2 emphasizes in another set of ominous opening text cards like the ones that kicked off Chapter 1, is dulled as the chase after Maya seems to become increasingly personally motivated.<\/p>\n

Of course, it was only a matter of time before some backstory finally intruded on what began as a backstory-free series. Chapter 2 begins to dig into the mystery of who exactly the Strangers are through sporadic flashbacks set 20 years in the past that revolve around a troubled young girl. Additionally, the mythological significance of \u201cTamara,\u201d who we learn is a bit of an urban legend around these parts, is also briefly expanded on by Venus\u2019s suspicious townsfolk. <\/p>\n

Ultimately, though, the film barely scratches the surface of these matters as it tends to the routine mayhem that the Strangers commit. A closing mid-credits montage offers a preview of Harlin\u2019s already completed final installment in the trilogy, and this contextless footage looks more interesting than anything that happens in Chapter 2. Yet with so much time wasted throughout this rebooted series thus far, it\u2019s hard to imagine anyone mustering up the energy to care about answers that nobody asked for in the first place.<\/p>\n

Score:\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u00a0Cast: Madelaine Petsch, Gabriel Basso, Ema Horvath \u00a0Director: Renny Harlin \u00a0Screenwriter: Alan R. Cohen, Alan Freedland \u00a0Distributor: Lionsgate \u00a0Running Time: 96 min \u00a0Rating: R \u00a0Year: 2025
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