The Strangers: Chapter 3 review – pointless remake trilogy ends with a sputter
Renny Harlin’s thankless trio of movies, taking a simple story and extending it for no creative reason, is at least finally over If you’re wondering how this shrug-along horror series has got this far, Renny Harlin shot all three back-to-back in Bratislava in late 2022; reshoots followed the indifferent response to the first chapter in 2024, which didn’t much alleviate the even more indifferent response to last year’s second . We’re getting them whether we wanted them or not: the modest resources had been spent, and so we now arrive at the last knockings which comprise this year’s most dutiful carnage. The mistake is to expand a morally gloomy universe that was better off self-contained; the more light Harlin and collaborators let in, the more their set-up presents as generic runaround, hopelessly out of place amid the recent horror renaissance. We’re deep into Strangers lore now, but last girl standing Maya (Riverdale graduate Madelaine Petsch, who surely hoped this was her Neve Ca...