Joel on Film

An undeniable feeling of relief comes right at the end of The Strangers: Chapter 3 that this unnecessary trilogy—billed as a reboot of 2008’s The Strangers but possessing neither the nerve-shredding tension of that film nor the concise inventiveness of its 2018 sequel, The Strangers: Prey at Night—is finally finished. Each of these movies, released once a year beginning with 2024’s The Strangers: Chapter 1 (obviously), has now proven to be nothing more than an exercise in the futility and nihilism of needless, ritualistic violence. Perhaps it’s not a good thing that criticism of them makes one sound prudish.

There’s nothing, after all, that really pushes the limit in these movies, which are wholly devoted to a sense of formula and routine in the gimmick that drives them: masked killers who target their prey for no reason other than they have arrived in their town. For some reason, writer/director Renny Harlin crafted three “chapters” out of this idea, and now, we have three, full-length features that, with small variations between each, are basically the same idea repeated three times. In the first chapter, Maya (Madelaine Petsch) was targeted, and her boyfriend killed, by the trio of “strangers” in silly animal masks.

The second chapter, which was the worst of them, felt the need to psychoanalyze the killers a bit by honing in on the backstories for a couple of them, and this new one finally—or “finally” with quotes, in case it indeed applies to no one in the audience—tells us how the third one came to be a part of the group. Since the origin for the other two was cold-blooded murder, one can probably do the math. This movie thinks you’ve never opened a schoolbook before.

The killers still go by their masked monikers of “Scarecrow” (Gabriel Basso), “Pin-Up Girl” (Ema Horvath) and “Dollface” (Ella Bruccoleri), one of whom died at the end of the last chapter and, through a series of flashbacks, still plays a prominent role in this one. Moreover, there’s an allegedly shocking revelation about parentage and the layers of corruption in this small town—specifically, the role of the local Sheriff (played by Richard Brake) in all of that. Maya’s sister (played by Rachel Shenton) finally decides to come looking for her, accompanied by a couple of other disposably nothing characters, which at least gives the movie a sense of mission.

It struggles, however, to give anything about this final installment in a purposeless series any newfound purpose at all, which remains an issue. None of these characters has ever meant anything beyond their immediate presence in front of us on the screen, and that especially extends to Maya, whose role here is expanded and subverted in ways that could be interesting in any other context. Basically, Scarecrow forcibly recruits her onto the team, which at least leads to a mildly intriguing bit of psychological gamesmanship ahead of the climactic confrontation.

The potential of that confrontation, though, is about par for the course with this series, which is to say that it’s undermined by the execution, reducing an important character to an expressionless, weapon-wielding avenger only after a bunch more violence is shed and innocence is cruelly taken. Finality defines the last moments of The Strangers: Chapter 3, and if that means it’s a slight step up from its predecessor, there’s still the caveat that that doesn’t mean much.

Rating: *½ (out of ****)