I really liked the first Strangers movie and to be honest, I think that The Strangers: Pray At Night is nowhere near as bad as people make out. The first movie was a home invasion thriller and the second was more of a slasher/survival-style movie. I saw The Strangers: Chapter 1 trailer and was really excited that the franchise was coming back.
How to Download The Strangers: Chapter 1
The Strangers: Chapter 1 was released on May 17, 2024. In two months from this date, you can expect it to become available for download or streaming from a digital platform such as Amazon Prime Video. Click on the Download button at the end of this review and check the current availability.
The Movie Review
I watched that initial trailer and then decided I was going to watch nothing more or read anymore and just go into it as blind as I could. Now, I may be a moron, but with a title like The Strangers: Chapter 1, I thought that this was a prequel or maybe even a reboot of the series.
Turns out that The Strangers: Chapter 1 is its own thing and the start of a new trilogy, a trilogy that was filmed back to back. Let me tell you, they are lucky that they did this as this movie is not doing well, no exaggeration, the wife and I were the only people in my theater and this was three days after the movie came out!
Familiar Plot Elements
When you watch this movie there is no way you will not have a real sense of Deja Vue and feel that you have seen it all before. It is pretty much a retread of that first movie, but not done as well. We have Maya and Ryan who are making a road trip across the country to start their new life in the Pacific Northwest.
Things do not go smoothly. A bit of car trouble means that they have to find a place to stay for the night and they come across a really remote Airbnb and decide to stay there for the night. Of course, this is not going to be a nice night’s rest that they end up getting as they are soon stalked by The Strangers.
Lack of Originality
A huge part of the fun of that first movie was that The Strangers never had any motive. They wanted to terrorize and kill just for the sake of doing so and their victims were very much wrong place at the wrong time. Had those people not been there, they would have just moved on until they found other people to terrorize.
There is no explanation really for who they are or anything like that. As I said, it is pretty much the same idea as that first movie, but it feels less original and it is just flat-out not done as well. The boyfriend character, Ryan is one of the worst characters I have seen in a horror/thriller/slasher movie in a very long time.
Poor Character Development
There were a couple of moments where I felt like Ryan could be part of The Strangers group! Ryan acts so freaking weird and the way he delivers some of his dialogue is just so odd. You never really care about Ryan or Maya and as they are the main characters of this new franchise that is a problem.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 was one of those movies that when I came out of the theatre, I wished that I had waited to see it on streaming. I will probably check out the two sequels to see if it gets better. To be fair, this was made as a three-part movie so perhaps it will pick up in Chapters 2 and 3, but I am not holding my breath. If those other two movies had not already been filmed, no way this is making enough money for them to make one let alone two sequels.
