{"id":49848,"date":"2025-10-01T15:38:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T19:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=49848"},"modified":"2025-10-01T15:38:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T19:38:12","slug":"the-strangers-chapter-1-2024-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/01\/the-strangers-chapter-1-2024-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Strangers: Chapter 1 [2024] [Halloween Horror Month 2025]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A pair of travelers deal with three unwanted, masked houseguests in Renny Harlin’s The Strangers: Chapter 1. Let’s revisit before Chapter 2’s review!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This review originally ran at Cityofgeek.com; other than some spelling\/grammar, it is unchanged (even If I’ve seen the first sequel now, review soon)<\/em><\/p>\n

The home invasion sub-genre of horror has a built-in level of terror and tension. We all can fear someone, or a group of someones, coming into our space and terrorizing us. We hope and pray that the strange noise we just heard downstairs in the kitchen is just an uneven bag falling over and not a masked menace ready to make our nights hell. The cat-and-mouse, ebb-and-flow of offence and defense in invasion and siege (the action bends to the subgenre) is a natural fit, leading to great films like Your Next, Inside<\/em>, and the original\u00a0The Strangers<\/em>. Even when the larger film doesn\u2019t quite work, such as The Purge, Trespassers<\/em>, or\u00a0In Their Skin<\/em>, it\u2019s hard to for the basic premise failing.<\/p>\n

The Strangers: Chapter 1<\/em>\u00a0fails, hard; embarrassingly so. How does this happen? Uninspired direction from a veteran (not necessarily good \u2013 but has a ton of experience) filmmaker, unlikable and laughably oblivious protagonists making incredibly poor choices performed by wooden actors, and a whole lot of unnecessary fluff around the edges.<\/p>\n

The Strangers<\/em>\u00a0is the sort of story where every entry in the franchise is essentially a remake with slightly different parameters. In the 2008 original, Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman are beset upon the trio of masked fiends because they were home, and the 2018\u00a0The Strangers: Prey at Night\u00a0<\/em>finds a family led by Christina Hendricks visiting a mobile home park, strangely empty except for the same three psychopaths ready to spill blood in a wider location (this one is easily my favorite, especially in the wild third act). Despite the trailer and title making it seem like a prequel,\u00a0The Strangers: Chapter 1<\/em>\u00a0essentially functions as a rather direct remake of the 2008 film, albeit worse in every way. You see, the\u00a0Chapter 1<\/em> moniker is meant to indicate the start of a trilogy, le sigh, as this seems to be the norm these days.<\/p>\n

So, a remake of the original with a few shifts. Here we have Ryan and Maya, two instantly unlikable entitled douchenozzles. They are the type of entitlement where they call the owner of the Airbnb they are staying at for a single night, and it\u2019s already nine PM to fix the fridge so their single six-pack of Budweiser, that they are going to drink immediately, doesn\u2019t get too warm. They aren\u2019t malicious, but absolutely oblivious to everything outside themselves. After their poor decision of a food choice off the highway (I still want to know why they are driving 3 days form New York to Portland for an interview) they stumble upon a \u201csmall town\u201d 3 hours east of Portland, Oregon (note: Pendleton, a decently sized town, is there along with many others. But it\u2019s a horror set up so I give a grudging pass) which seems to consist only of a diner, a hardware store, a garage. Those and a bunch of stereotype backwoods folks who glare at them city folk with their fancy cell phones and self-starting cars. Heeyuck. By golly, one of them’s even a vegetarian! Doesn\u2019t help that the pair scoff at it all or dismiss with a \u201coh it\u2019s so cuuuutte!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019m assuming these extra characters and aspects are set-ups for the mentioned proposed trilogy \u2013 all three films were filmed at once, so this won\u2019t be a \u201coh no, it sucks and bombed let\u2019s drop the rest.\u201d (looking at you Exorcist Believer), or a disjointed mess (Star Wars sequel trilogy as much as I dig Force Awakens and Last Jedi). However, the first film in any trilogy should stand completely on its own. Instead of creating teases of a world, it\u2019s more of a \u201cwhy is this here?\u201d as they don\u2019t work as even red herrings in the course of this film (though I feel they are meant to be); nor do they enter into the proceedings once they get going.\u00a0 My prediction: the town itself is a sort of cult, taking out outsiders who don\u2019t immediately jump at the religious pamphlets. So the \u201cStrangers\u201d are actually the people being stalked. Why else hire horror stalwart Richard Brake, if not to use him to scare the skin off a character?<\/p>\n

So when the car of Male Moron (Froy Guiterrez,\u00a0Light as a Feather)<\/em>\u00a0and Female Moron (Madelaine Petsch,\u00a0Riverdale<\/em>) breaks down (for which the mechanic needs to go to Eugene to get a part \u2013 a city further away than Portland so I guess they just picked an Oregonian city from a hat), they check into an Airbnb cabin reocmmended by the waitress. As expected, eventually they get the expected knock and \u201cIs Tamara home?\u201d linking phrase of the films. In a slight change to the formula, Male Moron leaves for a bit to go to town (setting up another of each of the \u201coooh scary hicks!\u201d and scoff at locals encounter-types), leaving Female Moron at home to not notice anything around her.<\/p>\n

There is an expectation in the genre for people to be a little oblivious or a little boneheaded in decision-making to keep the movie moving, but these two are specifically egregious with just how much. They quite possibly may be the dumbest, most oblivious leads in the genre. There is a major difference to \u201cnot thinking clearly in the moment\u201d to much of what this idiot pair elects to do. For the sake of my no-spoilers policy, I can\u2019t get into them, as much as I want to, but whew boy, we have some doozies (check out the Reddit discussions if you want the details).<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll give one example to whet your whistle. Part of this series is seeing someone standing in the background, silently watching. That\u2019s enough to create the tension, but it gets silly when Harlan has the stalkers stand or sit within FEET of our heroes. In ways that there is no way on earth the killers could not be seen or heard, or even a \u201csomeone is looking at me\u201d feeling.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It doesn\u2019t help that director Renny Harlin decided to shoot most of the film in extreme close-up. While this is meant to portray claustrophobia as the metaphorical noose gets closer and closer, all it does is make everything another level of dumb. There is one notable time toward the end where there is no doubt the trio is standing directly in front of the characters, but are not mentioned as if they are not (Gestures) RIGHT THERE. I guess if it\u2019s not on screen, it doesn\u2019t exist? Or can\u2019t be heard (I\u2019m listening for you inconsistent footsteps and loud trucks)? What isn\u2019t shot far too close just comes off flat, failing to build to anything remotely scary. There isn\u2019t any skill present. While Harlin isn\u2019t the strongest director; his best films lean into the cheese \u2013\u00a0Deep Blue Sea, Nightmare on Elm Street 4, Cliffhanger<\/em>\u00a0or even\u00a0Die Hard 2\u00a0<\/em>(hell, I\u2019d even give a note for the awful\u00a0Covenant<\/em>\u00a0as an accidental comedy) over the more serious attempts like\u00a0Driven<\/em>\u00a0or, well, this, but this doesn\u2019t feel like he\u2019s ever shot a film before, let alone a few dozen over forty years.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s more, but I don\u2019t want to get too ranty or spoilery. But I\u2019ll stop at they have multiple chances to leave, but they don\u2019t. Not like they are trying that hard to fight back, half-assing that as well. It doesn\u2019t help that the half-assed choices of the characters are not given much conviction by either Petsch or Guiterrez, playing more of a \u201cyou won\u2019t believe the rules of this Airbnb we rented\u201d over \u201cwe\u2019re stuck in the middle of the woods while 3 people who can apparently teleport stalk us\u201d. Between this and Tarot<\/a>, it\u2019s hard to choose which has the most checked out despite being surrounded by terror leads.<\/p>\n

The Strangers: Chapter 1<\/em> is ultimately a notable movie. Notable for being a flat, tension-less mess of a sub-genre that is hard to mess up.\u00a0 Since parts 2 and 3 are already filmed, I doubt they can learn too much from the errors of this film, but one can hope. I hope that the scope shifts, and now that the familiar ground is tread upon, the next two entries head into a new direction that works better.\u00a0 (and I know I\u2019ll see them regardless).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A pair of travelers deal with three unwanted, masked houseguests in Renny Harlin’s The Strangers: Chapter 1. Let’s revisit before Chapter 2’s review!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12],"tags":[477],"class_list":["post-49848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-halloween-horror-month","category-movie-reviews","tag-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49848"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49852,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49848\/revisions\/49852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}