The Strangers: Chapter 2

The Strangers: Chapter 2, directed by Renny Harlin, is a tragic testament to how a filmmaker of undeniable talent can completely lose his sense of purpose. This sequel—if you can call it that—feels less like a continuation and more like a contractual obligation, a hollow echo of what was once a terrifyingly simple premise. While Bryan Bertino's original, released in 2008, used minimalism as a weapon to create a suffocating effect, Renny Harlin's version replaces terror with noise, coherence with chaos, and plot with digital monsters. Watching this film is like seeing a seasoned director forget all the lessons that made his early work so memorable. It's a resounding failure, so misguided that one can't help but wonder how the man behind Cliffhanger and The Long Kiss Goodnight could have delivered something so catastrophically lifeless.

The story picks up exactly where the previous chapter left off. Maya, played once again by Madelaine Petsch, wakes up in the hospital, physically broken but miraculously alive after her ordeal with the masked strangers. From there, Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland's script offers little more than a grim game of run, hide, repeat. The strangers find Maya in this deserted facility, a hospital so devoid of human presence that it could serve as a taxidermy exhibit, and begin tormenting her once again. What should be a claustrophobic nightmare quickly dissolves into monotony, with Maya sprinting through identical hallways as if trapped in a looping video game level. The supposed suspense is stifled by lazy direction and erratic editing, giving us ninety minutes of déjà vu and despair.

Even more surprising is the film's creative cowardice. Despite its R rating, Renny Harlin refuses to engage in visceral terror or psychological unease. Whenever violence threatens to occur, the camera pulls back, cutting away just as the impact should happen. Instead, we are left with cheap sound design, frenetic lighting, and the eternal close-up of Madelaine Petsch's panicked eyes. The actress does what she can—her commitment is almost heroic—but she is stuck in a story that gives her nothing to work with. By the middle of the film, she is no longer fleeing from the killers, but from the audience's growing apathy. When a CGI boar bursts into the plot, it is the perfect metaphor for the film itself: loud, senseless, and unintentionally comical.

The most reprehensible creative choice, however, lies in the film's attempt to explain its own monsters. Flashbacks reveal the childhood of one of the killers, attempting to provide a tragic context for the faceless evil that once defined the series. It's a decision that betrays the very DNA of The Strangers. The horror of the original film came from the void, from the idea that there was no motive, no grand mythology, no explanation at all. Because you were at home was enough. By giving the killers a backstory, Renny Harlin and his screenwriters strip them of their mystery, transforming them from personifications of random malevolence into generic caricatures of serial killers. It's like dissecting a magic trick only to discover that it's all mirrors and sweat.

Technically, the film is just as disastrous. The lighting alternates between overexposure and darkness, the sound mixing drowns the dialogue in a synthetic atmosphere, and the editing sabotages what little rhythm the chase sequences might have had. At times, it's impossible to tell where Maya is geographically, or why she suddenly goes from the hospital to the forest to the barn in a single shot. The visual continuity completely falls apart, as if the scenes were thrown together in post-production with no regard for logic. Even the special effects, particularly the blood splatters and digital wounds, seem unfinished, their texture evoking the glossy unreality of an early 2010s YouTube short film.

And yet, the greatest tragedy is that Renny Harlin once understood tension. He once made thrillers that thrived on their pace, cadence, and energy. Here, that instinct has evaporated. The film stretches silence to unbearable limits, confusing emptiness with atmosphere. The long shots of Maya wandering through dark hallways aren't suspenseful, they're painful. When something finally does happen, it never feels deserved; it just feels like an act of mercy for our patience. The moment the words “To Be Continued” appear, you can feel the collective sigh of the audience vibrating through the theater, a sound halfway between resignation and disbelief.

You could say there's a certain irony in the fact that a film called The Strangers is so far removed from its own franchise. Every creative decision distances it further from what made the original iconic. Even the supposed thematic expansion, which alludes to cults, conspiracies, and cover-ups in small towns, only adds to the confusion. It's a film that confuses complexity with depth, tradition with substance. The result is a cinematic void where tension goes to die. Madelaine Petsch's physical dedication can't save it, nor can Richard Brake's brief, wasted appearance as the local sheriff, who spends most of his time sipping coffee in a restaurant.

The Strangers: Chapter 2 is not only a failure as a horror film, it is also a failure as a film. There is no tension, no logic, no soul. It feels like a product assembled on autopilot, stitched together from rejected takes and half-baked ideas. The only thing more terrifying than the masked killers is the realization that Renny Harlin, once a master of muscular, propulsive cinema, has delivered something so inert. It's a grim reminder that talent, when detached from vision, can turn into parody.

If the first film was a disappointment, this sequel is a collapse, a soulless exercise that misunderstands its own purpose. One can only hope that The Strangers: Chapter 3 will put an end, not to the story, but to this creative freefall. For now, our verdict is clear: The Strangers: Chapter 2 is the worst film of 2025, not only because it is a bad film, but also because it proves that even great directors can lose sight of what made them great.

The Strangers – Chapter 2
Directed by Renny Harlin
Written by Alan R. Cohen, Alan Freedland
Based on Characters by Bryan Bertino
Produced by Courtney Solomon, Mark Canton, Christopher Milburn, Gary Raskin, Alastair Burlingham, Charlie Dombek
Starring  Madelaine Petsch, Gabriel Basso, Froy Gutierrez, Ema Horvath, Ella Bruccoleri
Cinematography : José David Montero
Edited by Michelle Harrison
Music by Justin Burnett, Òscar Senén
Production companies : Lionsgate Films, Fifth Element Productions
Distributed by Lionsgate Films (United  States), Metropolitan filmExport (France)
Release dates : September 16, 2025 (Hollywood), September 26, 2025 (United States), October 29, 2025 (France)
Running time : 98 minutes

Seen on October 14, 2025 (VOD)

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the Déjà agency, which ultimately saved us two hours of travel time—and undoubtedly a slow hemorrhage of patience—to witness the agony of a genre we love so much. Influencers, meanwhile, seem to have found their new guilty pleasure in this disaster, awaiting the sequel with the enthusiasm of an undertaker opening a brand-new coffin. As for true horror thriller fans, it's best to avoid this failed séance: it invokes everything but thrills.

Mulder's Mark: