Starz Review: Should You Stream or Skip ‘The Strangers: Chapter 3’?

This week’s feature on Good Money After Bad Theatre spotlights The Strangers: Chapter 3, now available on Starz. This marks the conclusion of an arguably unnecessary trilogy that stretches a mere 58-minute storyline across an exhausting four-and-a-half hours. Quite the feat, isn’t it? The original 2008 film, The Strangers, was a landmark entry in the home-invasion thriller genre, renowned for its straightforward and chilling murder narrative. Its sequel wasn’t financially successful enough to warrant immediate follow-ups, leaving the concept dormant until director Renny Harlin decided to resurrect it. Harlin aimed to expand the simple concept into a trilogy, delving into the backstory of the masked killers. Unfortunately, the execution fell flat, and despite the commitment from all involved, the series trudged on, bringing us to this final chapter. At last, viewers can breathe a sigh of relief that the saga has concluded.

The Gist: Chapter 3 picks up from where Chapter 2 left audiences—bored and restless. The story focuses on Maya, also known as Jenny Finalgirl, portrayed by Madelaine Petsch of Riverdale. In the previous film, she managed to kill one of the antagonists, Pin-up Girl. However, instead of diving back into that climactic moment, the film rewinds to three years earlier, introducing unnecessary sequences that add little to the plot. This setup leads to one of the least inventive slasher scenes in cinematic history, further reinforcing the film’s lack of originality.

Returning to the present, we find Maya observing from the woods as Scarecrow (also known as Sackface) and Dollface discover Pin-up Girl’s body. Flashbacks reveal that Scarecrow and Pin-up Girl shared a romantic history, stripping away any remaining mystery. Meanwhile, Maya maneuvers through the forest, dodging Sheriff Rotter, whose name screams “villain.” As expected, Maya is eventually captured by the remaining killers, who haul her and Pin-up Girl’s body to a sawmill, providing a grim nod to Fargo’s infamous scene.

While Sheriff Rotter meanders aimlessly, the plot awkwardly jumps back and forth in time. Maya’s sister, played by Rachel Shenton, arrives with friends to search for Maya, predictably becoming fodder for uninspired kills. The film is peppered with drawn-out, silent scenes meant to evoke tension but seem more like an effort to reach the conventional 90-minute runtime. Ironically, despite its aspirations, Chapter 3 feels more like an overextended episode than a genuine feature film. Meanwhile, Scarecrow expresses a bizarre desire for Maya to join as the third killer, which she resists, evoking the same reluctance Petsch should have felt before signing onto this trilogy.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Remember The Divergent Series? Initially planned as four installments, it ended with just three because of poor reception and dwindling interest. Unlike The Divergent Series, The Strangers Trilogy failed to heed the same warning signs, doggedly completing its lackluster journey.

Performance Worth Watching: Good on Brake for capitalizing on one of the most hateful, hateable faces ever. He’s just making use of what the good lord gave him, by gum.

Sex And Skin: None.

Our Take: Just last night I was flim-cricketsplaining to some poor suffering party about how horror is where the medium’s true innovators are cultivating exciting new visual and narrative styles, and experimenting with the form. There are piles and piles of examples that deserve praise, multiple viewings and bigger budgets for their makers: Weapons, Bring Her Back, The Ugly Stepsister, Undertone, Backrooms, Obsession, etc., and those are just from the last 18 months or so. And it’s therefore shocking how regressive and uninspired these Strangers films are, playing like bottom-rung direct-to-VHS junk from the mid-1980s, feeding off the scraps left behind from the slashersplosion era. They all but scream don’t bother to watch us! in our faces. 

However, I can say that Chapter 3 is the best of the trilogy, for what it’s worth, and it’s worth jack squat. It’s still a bleary, wearying trudge from one pointless scene to the next. Perhaps there’s one coherent movie to be hacked together from the three, but even then, there’s still not a single memorable kill to be found — the Scarecrow fella just swings his ax until someone croaks — and these characters function as if they don’t exist on the same time-space continuum as common sense. At least the three films are consistent in the way they feature an upsetting lack of imagination, which is far more upsetting than anything that happens in this conclusive chapter, which TRIES SO HARD to chill yer buns off and disturb your brain, but doesn’t seem to really know how to do that. It can’t muster enough oomph to even be a merciless downer. It’s remarkably inept for a veteran director like Harlin who, never forget, helmed The Adventures of Ford Fairlane. I guess there’s just no following that.

Our Call: Sometimes there’s no beating around the bush. Eloquence be damned: these movies suck. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.