September 26, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Renny Harlin
Culture Representation: Taking place in 2008, in the fictional town of Venus, Oregon, the horror film “The Strangers: Chapter 2” (a direct sequel to 2024’s “The Strangers”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Latin people and one Asian person) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A woman leaves the hospital where she was receiving medical treatment because of a murderous rampage caused by three strangers, who continue to hunt down the woman.
Culture Audience: “The Strangers: Chapter 2” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and the 2008 “The Strangers” movie, but this atrocious sequel is proof that “The Strangers” franchise has run out of original ideas.
“The Strangers: Chapter 2” is a pathetic excuse for a movie. It just might have the stupidest crime victim in one of the worst horror sequels of all time. The protagonist constantly and deliberately runs away from safety and runs toward danger, as if she wants to get murdered. It’s all so heinous to watch.
Horror movies often have characters who do mindless things that put them at risk of getting killed. But “The Strangers: Chapter 2” (which has mediocre-to-bad acting) makes it obvious that the filmmakers had no real story and just decided to throw together a bunch of chase scenes that relentlessly insult viewers’ intelligence. The violent murders in this bottom-of-the-barrel trashy movie aren’t nearly as offensive as how “The Strangers: Chapter 2” assaults viewers’ time and brain cells.
Directed by Renny Harlin and written by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland, “The Strangers: Chapter 2” is the second movie in a planned trilogy of “The Strangers” movies directed by Harlin and written by Cohen and Freedland. These three movies (which were all filmed back-to-back) continue the story that began with 2008’s “The Strangers.” The villains in each “Strangers” movie are three masked and unidentified serial killers (one man and two women), who drive around and stop at houses in remote areas to randomly murder strangers.
In “The Strangers: Chapter 2,” the three killers are described in the movie’s end credits by the types of masks they wear. The male killer wears a scarecrow hooded mask, so he can be called Scarecrow (played by Matus Lajcak), and he likes to use an axe in his murders. The younger female killer wears a doll mask, so she can be called Dollface (Olivia Kreutzova). The older female killer, who wears a Betty Boop-styled mask and can be called Pin-Up (played by Ema Horvath), is more unhinged than Dollface. The women are more likely to use knives, but all three killers can also use whatever weapon is at their disposal.
In “The Strangers: Chapter 1” (released in 2024), the main protagonists were a dating couple named Ryan (played by Froy Gutierrez) and Maya (played by Madelaine Petsch, one of the executive producers of this movie trilogy), who went on a cross-country road trip from New York to Oregon, because Maya had a job interview in Portland, Oregon. (“The Strangers: Chapter 1,” “The Strangers: Chapter 2” and “The Strangers: Chapter 3” were actually filmed in Bratislava, Slovakia.) Because of car trouble, Maya and Ryan got stranded in the rural town of Venus, Oregon, where they rented a cabin in an isolated wooded area and were targeted by the serial killers. By the end of the movie (spoiler alert), Ryan died, while Maya was in a hospital.
The end of the “The Strangers: Chapter 1” is also mentioned in “The Strangers: Chapter 2,” which shows Maya waking up in the hospital and being told by hospital staffers Nurse Danica (played by Brooke Johnson) and Dr. Tate (played by JR Esposito) that Ryan died from a loss of too much blood. Maya and Ryan had been dating for five years when he was murdered. The couple had been having some relationship problems because Maya wanted Ryan to propose marriage to her, but he was reluctant to make that commitment.
In an unintentionally silly part of “The Strangers: Chapter 1,” the serial killers captured Maya and Ryan in the cabin’s living room and were about to kill them when Ryan had a change of heart about the marriage proposal. He proposed marriage in a scene where Ryan knew he was probably going to die, but he asked Maya to marry him anyway. Maya said yes to the marriage proposal, right before Ryan got the fatal blows from the serial killers.
The reason why it’s important to mention this traumatic marriage proposal is because an unintentionally funny part of “The Strangers: Chapter 2” is Maya always correcting people who describe Ryan has her “boyfriend.” She insists that people describe Ryan as her “fiancé.” It doesn’t matter what people call Ryan. He’s still dead—although Maya has flashback memories and hallucinations of Ryan in “The Strangers: Chapter 2.”
Not long after Maya gets the bad news about Ryan being dead, Maya is interviewed in her hospital bed by Sheriff Rotter (played by Richard Brake) and Deputy Tommy Walters (played by Pedro Leandro), who can only get a vague description from Maya about the killers and the killers’ truck. And quicker than you can say “awful horror movie,” Maya finds herself beng targeted by the masked killers again in the hospital, where all the lighting suddenly turns red.
During this ludicrous chase scene, the hospital staff is nowhere to be found, except for an unlucky orderly (played by Vincent Zaninovich) who walks into the hospital’s morgue at the wrong time. Maya is in the morgue and sees what happens to this orderly. She also ends up hiding in the same storage unit in the morgue where (surprise!) Ryan’s body is being stored. Her reaction isn’t to scream or jump in fright but to caress Ryan’s face and reminisce about the good times they had together.
Maya has multiple chances to be in a safe place and to get help, but she keeps running into the woods, where she knows the serial killers are lurking. Four housemates named Jasmine (played by Ella Bruccoleri), Chris (played by Florian Clare), Gregory (played by Gabriel Basso) and Wayne (played by Milo Callaghan) give a car ride to Maya, who flags them down on a rainy night after she runs away from the hospital. The roommates offer Maya a place to stay at their house, after Maya tells them that she escaped from killers chasing her in the woods. But before they go to the house, Maya jumps out of the car and runs back into the woods.
The movie’s flimsy excuse for Maya’s irrational actions is that she’s paranoid and feels that she can’t trust anyone. That only makes sense up until a certain point. It doesn’t make sense when Maya gets in the roommates’ car and doesn’t ask to be driven to the nearest place where she can emergency transportation out of Venus. Maya left her phone behind at the hospital, but she could’ve borrowed a phone to ask someone in her life to buy her a train ticket or plane ticket.
Maya also doesn’t think about going to the sheriff’s office when she gets a car ride because that would be too logical for an idiotic movie like “The Strangers: Chapter 2.” Maya has been told that the sheriff’s office hasn’t been able to solve the murder spree in the area, including other murders that happened before Maya and Ryan arrived. However, that shouldn’t have prevented her from seeking shelter and protection at a law enforcement station that should be open 24 hours a day.
Doesn’t Maya have any family or friends who can help her? The movie shows that while Maya was in the hospital before the seral killers arrived, she got a video message from her sister Debbie (played by Rachel Shenton) saying that Debbie and someone named Howard (presumably Debbie’s husband or boyfriend) were stuck at Heathrow Airport in London, but they arranged to have a private EMT (emergency medical techician) service pick up Maya in an ambulance. Once Maya saw that the killers found her at the hospital, and Maya escaped, the last thing on her mind should be waiting around for a private ambulance. The only new things that are revealed about Maya in “The Strangers: Chapter 2” is that she has a sister, and Maya acts even more dimwitted than Maya did in “The Strangers: Chapter 1.”
“The Strangers: Chapter 2” attempts to give a backstory for two of the killers, by showing flashbacks of Pin-Up (played by Nola Wallace) and Scarecrow (played by Jake Cogman) as children. However, this backstory is poorly written and unsatisfying. It’s enough to say that Pin-Up and Scarecrow have known each other since childhood, when Pin-Up began showing homicidal tendencies. As a serial-killing adult, Pin-Up is known for knocking on people doors and asking, “Is Jasmine here?” The movie shows Jasmine as a child (played by Pippa Blaylock) and how Jasmine knew Pin-up and Scarecrow when they were all about 7 to 9 years old.
“The Strangers: Chapter 2” can’t even get small details right. During all the frantic and brutal fights that Maya has in the movie, her gold-painted fingernails continue to look perfectly manicured. And there’s a scene in the woods where dirty and disheveled Maya suddenly pulls out a needle and thread to sew up a wound. Where did that needle and thread come from while she was running for her life? Don’t expect any logical answers in a movie that has no logic and can only shovel up cinematic garbage because that’s all this terrible movie has to offer.
Lionsgate released “The Strangers: Chapter 2” in U.S. cinemas on September 26, 2025.
