Nothing original about this awful horror origin tale
Review
The Strangers: Chapter 1 (R16, 90 mins) Directed by Renny Harlin Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett *
Back in 2008, a film called The Strangers turned up in our cinemas. It featured a couple of out-oftowners staying at an isolated holiday home when a trio of masked intruders break in and scare the bejeebers out of them before – spoiler alert – stabbing them to death.
The Strangers was distinguished by having Liv Tyler in a leading role and also for making out like an absolute pirate at the box-office.
The inevitable sequel took almost a decade to appear. But when it did, The Strangers: Prey At Night was greeted as an inferior, but still-effective slasher that repeated the essential beats of the first film’s storyline. Again, a couple stay overnight at an out-of-the-way location and, again, they are stabbed to death by three masked attackers.
So when the requisite attractive young couple – Madelaine Petsch and Froy Gutierrez – turn up at an isolated house in The Strangers: Chapter 1 and a trio of masked baddies arrive outside with various pointy implements, I figure this is only going to end one way.
Over the last week, I’ve been rewatching the startlingly good and informative doco Woodland Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (you can find it on Shudder, or streaming at AroVision) and I’ve been reminded just what a great proving ground for young directors the classic ‘Cabin In The Woods’ set-up can still be.
But, nah. The Strangers: Chapter 1 is a compendium of bad ideas, shot through with a nasty line in creepy misogyny. There is nothing here that a hundred other films haven’t already done better.
And director Renny Harlin is not a young film-maker. Far from it. Harlin is a grizzled veteran with a career that stretches back nearly 40 years. Although, in the last decade, Harlin’s output has been less than stellar, with 2021’s The Misfits being one of the least enjoyable and lousily made loads of drivel I’ve watched on this job.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 is a lazy and achingly stupid film. Even worse, the name alone will probably propel it into profit and the two threatened sequels will almost certainly turn up in the next year or so.
And, because hope springs eternal and I still love this job, I’ll head out to see them and write a few hundred words to tell you what I thought.
But if Harlin is still hogging the director’s chair and he hasn’t turned the series over to a young film-maker with ideas to burn, then I’m pretty sure those sequels are going to be the same dire rubbish I sat through on Thursday night.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 is in select cinemas nationwide.