I think this franchise missed their calling. Just imagine, if you will, rewinding to before we knew anything specific about this film. We have a preconceived notion of what this film might be, but then, we open on The Strangers instead of any victims. A young lady approaches the cabin door and knocks. It opens. “Is Tamra here?” The young woman asks, like in the previous Strangers films, and the audience thinks they know what is up. The camera pans around to show Hannibal Lecter, “Why, Yes, won’t you come in? We’re having a nice chianti.” bewildered, the young lady enters the house, and The Strangers have been forever reinvented. The other Strangers are waiting outside, but their friend never comes back out. What are they to do? Go in after her? They had a plan, it had worked before, but they never accounted for this.
Or, how about we just flip in in general to the girl asking “Is Tamra home?” And there actually is a Tamra. Like, how bonkers would that be? What would that Stranger do in that situation without their mask on? Fucking do something with this franchise other than just make shitty repetitive films.
The Strangers: Chapter One, is directed by Renny Harlin (Red Flag #1), and features a young couple driving backroads when they stop at a diner,where everyone does the opposite of cheers. They all stare because no one knows their name. This weird unnecessarily creepy town has no hotel or motel, but has little kids selling bibles. To who? Your town is in the middle of nowhere. A town of this size, those boys already gave everyone a bible. Do they just hang out on the offside chance someone needs one in a pinch?
There’s nothing good about this. their car breaks down, while they are inside the diner, which is not suspicious at all. They rent an “internet house” for the night, and it has chickens. Who is feeding these chickens? Why are there chickens at an AirBnB? Our leads are the two dumbest people you’ll ever meet. It is so hard to root for them.
There’s a scene where the Strangers eventually get in the house, and they barricade themselves in the bedroom using a dresser. The male Stranger uses an Axe to hack the ever loving crap out of the door, so they can see in, and walks away. It takes our couple like 5 seconds to come to the conclusion that they “left” and it is a good idea to move the dresser and escape. Bitch, I would have died in that room. Of dehydration. I would have needed to wait so freaking long to move that dresser, the Strangers would have either gotten bored, or just burned the cabin down.
And to make things worse, our leading man can’t eat a cheeseburger in a normal way to save his life.
If I hadn’t seen Tarot this year, I might be willing to jump on board and throw this under the bus as the worst of the year, but Tarot has no redeemable value. Renny Harlin occasionally finds a few minutes that have some tension, so the whole thing isn’t totally pointless. So basically, it’s not Tarot.
Plus, it benefits from being a horror movie narrated by William Michael Redman, and I’m telling you, he makes horror films just even incrementally better. his voice compliments the genre perfectly, and the attention to detail in the written script is really solid. Words written on walls, the cheeseburger eating, horns on the ceiling, and some unnerving stuff found in the woods, are all good. But mostly, it plays really well with all the times our leads don’t know they’re being watched, but we can see that they are. So, the narration has to point out a Stranger, and it is very clear about how that Stranger is out of the line of sight.
I can’t recommend this though. the track is solid, but the film is not. Chapter One sounds like a threat at this point.There’s no way a sequel could ever be good. Unless you’re willing to flip the script on the formula, and suddenly in Chapter Two, The Strangers knock on the wrong door, and become the hunted, or have to rescue one of their own.
If you do another, the next time a stranger asks if Tamra is home, the answer is “Yes, come on inside.” And let’s turn this franchise creatively on its head.
Final Grade: D-
