Internet Janitor
Don’t remake a movie you didn’t understand. The original Strangers film, starring Liv Tyler and directed by Bryan Bertino, was released not that long ago in 2008. Now, we have the first chapter in, by far, the most unnecessary trilogy of all time. This time, the films are directed by Renny Harlin, a director who peaked in 1993 with Cliffhanger starring Sylvester Stallone and fell miserably in the box office disaster Cutthroat Island in 1995. Yes, he did direct one of the best Nightmare on Elm Street films with the fourth entry. I’ll give him that. I’m also not saying the 2008 film is a horror masterpiece, but it was very effective and left a lasting memory.
There is no reason for this movie to exist.
It has no merits.
There is nothing at all good about it.
In this remake of the original, a young couple (it doesn’t matter who they are or their names) on a road trip stop in a creepy little town where everyone looks like a serial killer. Real subtle stuff. After their car “mysteriously” stops working they are forced to spend the night in a quaint Air B&B and then The Strangers show up.
This movie made me question my existence.
The acting is poor. For some reason, the masks on The Strangers look worse than the ones from 2008, and it’s shot like a cheap student film.
A hook of this trilogy is that we’ll get to see how The Strangers became The Strangers, which shows a fundamental misunderstanding about what makes them scary in the first place. Take Rob Zombies Halloween, for instance, where we get to see Michael Myers’s miserable childhood as a possible reason behind his later killing spree. This was a mistake. Like with the strangers in the original Halloween, we didn’t know why he was killing these people. There was no motive. That is terrifying.
The human mind can be a great horror film asset. Let it run wild, and it can create more horrific things that wrap around your movie than you could ever imagine.
I’m going to call it that The Strangers are part of a religious cult and commanded to get sacrifices or something insanely stupid like that.