Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Lindsay Traves | Film | September 30, 2025
In preparing to examine the second installment in this trilogy, I reread my own words about The Strangers: Chapter 1. It was refreshing to see my opinion hadn’t changed, but a bit upsetting to think my fresher criticism would be mostly the same. The second installment has arrived and with it, the same issues: these movies have abandoned a lot of what their inspiration created in favor of a rural slasher, and Chapter 2 makes it even more egregious by leaning even farther into something it has no intention of delivering on. But, like the first one, The Strangers: Chapter 2 is a well-crafted horror flick with well-shot slasher scenes and a lead that’s easy to root for.
After barely surviving the events of the fist, Maya (Madelaine Petsch) is resting up at a local hospital waiting patiently for the arrival of her sister, or the pinch-hitting EMT, to take her back to home base. But before she can liberate herself from the spooky town, the hospital is descended upon by masked killers, which sends Maya into a game of cat and mouse spanning all four corners of the isolated locale. Paranoid, beaten up, and clever as ever, Maya battles masked killers, the elements, and a boar for some reason. And while no one wants to give her straight answers about why the townspeople seem bent on her demise, the movie wants to spend some time setting up the lore that led to the masked murderers wielding weapons in the night.
It’s nice that Maya has a bit more survival instincts this time. I roasted her willingness to get lit and dance around undressed in a scary cabin after being harassed in the first part, so it’s nice to see the lead use her fight-or-flight response more effectively. Petsch is so naturally likeable and works hard in this role, so giving her some sense makes the movie much easier to watch. Unfortunately, the long, stretched-out middle portion of this trilogy quickly runs out of things for her to do, so it maroons her randomly and almost never gives her a second to breathe. It’s rewarding to watch her figure things out with varying levels of success, but there are simply no stakes when the lead is fending for herself in the woods while omnipresent killers seem to be just skulking around in masks. We already witnessed Maya’s transition to hardened, and it’s somewhat fun to see a puff of well-coiffed red hair bounce around these sorts of battles, but once we’ve witnessed her grit, there isn’t much more for the movie to do save for dropping lore breadcrumbs that it somehow insists it doesn’t need to rely on.
The magic of The Strangers is the randomness of the killings, and this trilogy seems bent on abandoning that idea to build up to some reveal about psycho children, a church, and a town-wide coverup. Which would be fine if it didn’t spend so much time insisting via its opening credits text and throwaway lines about the scare being because the killings are random. The Strangers as a trilogy seems lost in an identity crisis, unsure if it wants to tell a slow-burning story about a killer cult or to lean into the premise of a massively successful home invasion horror movie. Like, get the net, “it’s a lot scarier when there’s no motive, Sid.”
The Strangers: Chapter 2 has some of the pulse-pounding magic of the best slashers or cat-and-mouse terrors, but it gets so lost in stretching a short tale into a trilogy with a bold release strategy. The second installment gracefully shares some of the secrets instead of keeping them too buried like the first, but they’re unfortunately inconsequential and thus not at all satisfying. We don’t know or care enough about these townspeople to feel much for a mask removal or a lore reveal, and Maya’s crusade is only about her own escape and survival. While the whole idea is a lot of fun and seeing bloody happy faces should be exciting, this second installment unfortunately confirms some of the suspicions tied to the first: that The Strangers trilogy might have well-acted and well shot (save for some really oddly placed CGI horror scenes) but the story is befuddling and does not warrant a three part event.
The Strangers: Chapter 2 hits theaters September 26, 2025
