Outside of some nice cinematography exploiting the woodland locations of Bratislava (standing in for Venus, Oregon), this is a worthless reboot, which finds Madelaine Petsch and Froy Gutierrez (both insufferable) being harassed by the antagonists of the previous movies while vacationing in an Airbnb for their fifth anniversary. But whereas the murderous masked trio brought a constant sense of menace and threat in the 2008 and 2018 movies, enhanced by the alternately suspenseful and stylish approach those movies took, they resemble only shadows of their former selves here, mostly moving in slow motion (or even running away from the protagonists!) as their quarries stupidly fail to fight back or escape despite ample opportunities. If the trajectory of the movie's home invasion plot feels inevitable, it never comes across as natural, as it lamely recreates whole sequences from its predecessors, sans any semblance of authenticity or logic, en route to a flat and predictable ending that sets up for at least two more movies in a trilogy that threatens to be one of the worst in recent memory.
"The Strangers: Chapter 1" never scared or entertain me during a brief 90 minute runtime that somehow felt twice as long, although it did inspire a few groans and head in hands moments along the way. As a fan of the other movies in this series, I really wanted to enjoy this third entry, and looked for positives throughout. Alas, I just couldn't find them. This is a terrible, terrible movie, born of the foolish ideas that the masked assailants of the franchise need to be demystified, and that recycling material from better movies is something to build a trilogy around. Who knows; maybe the next couple of movies will turn things around for Harlin's reboot saga. It could hardly get worse.
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