The Strangers – Chapter 2 (directed by Renny Harlin) occurs in the immediate aftermath of the carnage of Chapter 1. The incredibly concise narrative timeline is helped on by the fact that all three Strangers films in the planned trilogy were shot concurrently in Slovakia. The films follow a couple — reduced after the first to a lone survivor, Maya (Madelaine Petsch), who becomes the unwitting victim by the titular antagonists in the backwoods of Oregon. Maya, now injured and grieving the loss of her partner, Ryan (Froy Gutierrez), scarcely has time to tend to wounds before the killers return to finish what they started. Like Chapter 1, this middle entry functions as a game of cat and mouse. The maze opens up in this chapter, however, to a more diverse range of locations and characters that present Maya with a series of questions regarding her spiritual proximity to strangers.
The hunt begins in the hospital, across a selection of tight spaces, an arena where Harlin shines. In the simplest terms, Harlin is a bricklayer. Each scene is a block that contributes to the whole, and there are clear distinctions between them, assisted by Harlin’s use of new physical spaces to accompany differing types of philosophical challenges. The setup for most of these scenes is similar: Maya finds herself in a new room — she analyses its structures, gaps, exits, and tools; she takes notes of all at her disposal, and takes a series of movements to escape that place. In her first confrontation with the Strangers, we see her draw the curtains closed on several adjoining hospital beds, anticipating that the killer will search every “room,” but before the audience knows where she will hide, Harlin cuts to the Strangers’ point of view. Here is the tension of knowing the ingredients but not the recipe — if the audience understands she will live through this maze of puzzles, the thrill must live in how many different modes of engagement Harlin can find in these scenes. Just look at the hospital sequences for proof. First, Maya straightforwardly escapes into a dumbwaiter, the only mystery being in where she will end up. Then she hides among canisters of oxygen and is found — how will she survive direct physical contact? She next hides in the morgue, lying on top her partner’s corpse in a refrigerated compartment; the Stranger opens the doors to the deceased, one by one, and what, we ask, could possibly interrupt his rhythm?
Maya’s gold nails shine brilliantly in the darkness of the mortuary cooler, and indeed Harlin captures them magnificently at several points in the film. His use of dramatic color in Chapter 2 in general is exemplary, showcasing the depth of a frame or expression with a measured approach that draws in as much from Petsch as it can, taking full advantage of her wonderfully vibrant red hair. This much is not an incredible departure from the first chapter, but Chapter 2’s opening scene does break the rhythm of these films. For the first time, Harlin sets out to answer the question: “Who are the Strangers?” It’s a risky maneuver, one that begs for eye-rolling and lost interest. At the very core of the original film is the terrifying idea of the randomness of both attacker and victim. A generic waitress in a generic diner in a forgotten part of Oregon overhears the sheriff speaking about a woman in a hospital who has survived an encounter with the Strangers, and it’s immediately apparent she is the killer — and then suddenly the waitress is a child. For the duration of the film, this killer is a child in the mind of the viewer. When Maya escapes the hospital and hides in some stables, the waitress enters and pauses. Harlin takes time to capture her reaction to the horses. What connection does this child have to horses? What does she fear? A connection between Maya and the waitress is forged in a second flashback, which finds the child waitress smiling after killing a small animal in the woods. Maya has just killed a wild boar.
Death is not an uncommon occurrence in these films, but the fight with the boar is exceptional for the way that Harlin chooses to allow the death reverence. Every other human in the film is killed almost instantaneously, often with an axe to the chest, an arrow to the face, or the inverse. People are there and then they’re gone, and the camera does not linger on their corpses. The boar however, dies slowly. It pants and screams and its eye is wild and darting and looking right into the audience. It’s strange that the only death in the film that has any weight is a pig’s. Maya’s view of the “other” is corrupted by her encounters with death — everyone she encounters dies, almost as if she were the reaper itself. This pattern is not upended, but cemented when she has a last encounter with the Strangers, facing the waitress with the tools and hatreds collected across the film. In the absence of love, something rotten has grown in all these characters, and when at last the bodies are collected and mourned, there remains the fundamental American question: Why are all these kids killing each other?
DIRECTOR: Renny Harlin; CAST: Madelaine Petsch, Gabriel Basso, Ema Horvath; DISTRIBUTOR: Lionsgate; IN THEATERS: September 26; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 38 min.
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