“In 2023, more than 1,670 people were murdered by strangers,” advises an opening title card in “The Strangers: Chapter 2.” A citation in a Renny Harlin film, though, being as unlikely as a zero body count, we can take that information with a pinch of salt.
Yet there’s a purity to this superstabby middle film in Harlin’s mostly completed trilogy, begun last year and based on Bryan Bertino’s exemplary 2008 thriller “The Strangers.” The script, by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland, is basically one long chase sequence, performed by characters unburdened by complex dialogue or — and not only for those wearing doll face masks — the need for facial mobility. This means that Madelaine Petsch, as Maya, our hounded heroine, must emote like a maniac while José David Montero’s camera clings close enough to count her pores. If she had any, that is.
What Maya has is a murdered husband, a broken heart and a wounded body, the residue of the home invasion in “Chapter 1.” Recovering in the hospital, she is questioned by the ghoulish Sheriff Rotter (Richard Brake) — whose face suggests he’s seen one too many movies like this — and his cow-eyed deputy (Pedro Leandro). Soon, however, Maya will be playing cat and mouse with a hatchet-toting pursuer and his doll-faced crew. Snuffling and grunting like a bear in garbage (it’s hard to breathe beneath a sackcloth hood), her would-be killer remains numbingly anonymous.
With little furtherance of the plot beyond confusing flashbacks to a creepy childhood triad, “Chapter 2” is hackneyed and silly, relying heavily on Petsch’s sneakily resilient scream queen. In the best scene, Maya feverishly battles a wild boar with an energy her pursuers never come close to matching. The sequence is fast, furious and fun — a residual electric charge in a movie that had flatlined long before.
The Strangers: Chapter 2
Rated R for blades, boars and bloody wounds. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters.
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