This has to be one of those franchise most people do not like but somehow I do, Im probably too soft when it comes to criticism and my scores are often higher than normal but I think I land at least the number for this one, The Strangers Chapter 1 I woulndt call it a complete waste of time but you will find me ranting a bit here because yeah they could have done way better. Now with Chapter 3 releasing on February I wanted to watch all movies starting from the OG that I posted about a few days ago. This whole thing is just a lazy copy of the 2008 movie but somehow they managed to strip away everything that made the original work in the first place. When they announced this was gonna be part of a trilogy I got excited because I thought maybe we would finally get some answers about who these masked psychos are and why they do what they do to random people, but after watching Chapter 1 it didnt do much context so I realized they are just dragging this out for no good reason except to milk more money out of a franchise that should have stayed dead or they really going to data dump on Chapter 3, almost like doing the reboot, sequel and prequel all in one package of a trilogy, so I dont know whats next and dont expect too much out of it. The whole setup feels so played out and tired, you got Maya and Ryan driving through Oregon on some road trip and of course their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere at the sketchiest town you have ever seen, with creepy kids handing out bibles and mechanics that look like they wanna murder you before you even get out of the vehicle. These two idiots decide to stay at some random cabin in the woods even though every single person in that town gave them bad vibes from the second they arrived, but no they just go with it because the script needed them to be stupid enough to put themselves in danger without any logical reason behind it.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22050754/
- Platform: PRIME VIDEO
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The whole movie just recycles the same exact story elements from the 2008 version but makes everything worse somehow, instead of building dread and making you feel uncomfortable they just throw in cheap jump scares and people standing in doorways for two seconds before disappearing into thin air. Maya keeps seeing the masked woman at the door asking for some person who does not live there, then she sees one of them inside the house while she is in the shower, then the power goes out and suddenly all three of them are running around the cabin playing hide and seek with a couple that has zero survival instincts between them. Ryan leaves Maya alone multiple times to go back into town for his inhaler or to get food, even though there is a psychopath knocking on their door and acting like everything is totally fine, also this guy has zero balls when he had doll face on sight with the shotgun but I guess she had him all the time, but still who the hell does that when your girlfriend is freaking out about masked strangers lurking around the property. Then when he finally comes back with his burger he just eats like a complete slob with ketchup dripping everywhere, the camera zooms in on his face while he chews and I kept waiting for something to happen like him getting attacked from the back or something, but nope, its like the movie just wanted to watch him eat the damn burger.
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The kills in this movie are so weak and disappointing, for something rated R you would expect some actual gore or creative violence but every single death happens off screen or cuts away at the last second, reminds me of FNAF 1 & 2 where they did choose to be PG 13 when they should be R rated, so it was like a backwards situation, so yeah kinda the same which is just embarrassing for a horror movie over all like whats the point. They give Ryan a shotgun at one point and instead of using it to actually defend themselves he just puts it down on the ground so he can hug Maya with his back turned to both the door and the window, there are so many scenes that were too predictable and honestly nobody in real life would be that dumb even in a panic situation. The strangers themselves are not scary at all in this version, they just stand around doing nothing most of the time and the few moments where they actually attack someone it happens so fast you barely see anything, the whole point of the masks in the original was to make them feel inhuman and unpredictable but here they just feel like random people cosplaying horror movie characters. They set this up as chapter one of a trilogy and spent the whole movie teasing that we might finally learn who these people are and why they target random victims, but by the end you get absolutely nothing except hints that maybe the next two movies will explain it all which feels like such a ripoff after sitting through this boring retread of a story we already saw done better sixteen years ago.
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The two lead characters have zero chemistry together, you are supposed to believe they have been dating for five years and Ryan is about to propose because why not make this cliche, but they act like strangers who just met last week and got stuck together on a road trip neither of them wanted to take. The dialogue is so bad it made me cringe multiple times, they say things no real person would ever say in those situations and make decisions that only exist because the plot needed them to stay in danger instead of just leaving when they had multiple chances to get out, you might think they act they way they do because they are been push by this psychos like real psychological horror situation, almost like the OG SAW movie but its not, they just dumb as hell. When they find a dead bird hanging upside down in the cabin they finally realize something is wrong but instead of grabbing their stuff and running to the road or hiding in the woods they decide to crawl under the house through a vent and then run straight into a shack five feet away from the cabin, staying on the property where the killers obviously know every inch of the area. Ryan sprains his ankle or his leg gets stuck at some point but then somehow he is still moving around fine, the whole scene makes no sense and just exists to give them a weapon they will immediately waste by making more stupid choices that get them almost killed again and again.
At the end of the day this movie feels like it was made in the 1990s and sat on a shelf for thirty years before someone decided to dump it into theaters, I can see a part of the audience enjoying it though, ngl my wife might watch it because its not that scary but its obvious when you ask a movie fan or more specific a horror movie fan will tell you its disgusting, yes I already point out everything wrong I find with it but the good thing about it is that I didn't felt eager to shut it down and go do something else, there is something on the movie that kept me wanting to watch the end. The director Renny Harlin took what made the original Strangers terrifying, which was the randomness and the lack of explanation for why this violence was happening to normal people and turned it into a generic slasher where you know exactly what is gonna happen before it does. I really hope Chapter 3 do something different, because spoiler, chapter 2 didnt, but I still have that hope that on Feb the next one actually deliver on the promise of giving us answers about these killers, but after seeing how weak and not scary they made the strangers in this first movie I do not have any faith left that this trilogy will be worth watching more than once, this would have fit better as a streaming trilogy movie and not theatrical. They are clearly stretching this out to make more cash thats for sure so they better give us something, some excitement, some action, some real drama on the last chapter. I am giving this a 6 out of 10 and that is being generous, so avoid this unless you have seen the original because its almost the same thing, reason why I keep thinking this chapter 1 was just a reboot that was unnecessary.
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