Please Close This Book

The Strangers-Chapter 3 brings an end to one of the most puzzlingly pointless trilogies of all time. Shot back to back (although this instalment underwent some sizeable reshoots after the tepid reception to Chapter 1), the three entries encompass scarcely enough content to cover a single film and are devoid of scares or ideas. In fairness, this instalment seems like it almost has the genesis of something to say. Almost.

If you were lucky enough to miss the previous instalments it won't take long to get you caught up. In Chapter 1, Maya (Madelaine Petsch) ran around in the woods a bit with her boyfriend before he was killed by some mask wearing locals of the backwater town they were visiting. In Chapter 2, she ran around in the woods on her own a bit before managing to kill one her face hiding pursuers.

Here, we pick up straight after Chapter 2 and, after a brief interlude in a church, Maya is capture by lead "Stranger" Gregory. Meanwhile, Maya's sister Debbie and brother-in-law Howard arrive in town with a private detective to search for her. We cut between the newcomers investigating the sketchy townspeople and Maya, as she realises Gregory has plans for her beyond simply knifing her up.

This is where the crumb of an idea comes in. The Strangers franchise has always sold itself on the horror of being stalked and tormented for no reason whatsoever, the idea that violence can happen with no particular purpose. With the effect her journey has had on Maya and some more backstory for Gregory, Chapter 3 seems to push back on that notion, suggesting that there is indeed some twisted logic behind cold-blooded murder. The problem is, with no work done previously to set this shift up, and haphazard execution at best here, it's impossible to tell if this is actually the film maker's position. It is entirely possible that the film is simply an incoherent mess. After all, we still get the standard "because you are here" murder spiel, and it feels unlikely that a film with needle drops as blunt as "Crazy on You" (when the crazy person is driving) is being subtle.

Once you set that aside, this is really more of the same as the previous chapters. That is to say, a whole lot of nothing. Half the film feels like it's just padding time and even when things do pick up, they aren't particularly entertaining and certainly aren't scary. The kills are a little less bloodless this time round and there are a couple of moments when a loud noise might make you jump, but its bare bones stuff.

Petsch does her best to sell Maya's predicament but it feels like she is constantly having to overact to try and give some consequence to the flat script. Gabriel Basso is an intimidating physical presence as Gregory, provided he has the mask on. When the sack comes off he tries to be menacingly distant, but slowly delivering his lines as he stares into space just makes him look partially brain-dead and any intimidation quickly melts away.

The best thing that can be said about The Strangers-Chapter 3 is that it looks fairly good. Not interesting in any way, but not cheap looking either. Director Renny Harlin may mistake boredom for tension but, being a veteran of 90s action cinema, he knows where to put the camera and how to light a scene so it avoids the overly shadowy, budget look of so many mediocre modern horror movies.

When the best thing you can say about a film is that it looks "fine", the writing is on the wall. This entry may have ever so slightly more going on than the others but it's still weak sauce and nowhere near enough to stop the trilogy being an enormous waste of everyone's time. Incredibly, the punishment might not end here, with threats of re-releasing the films as one big supercut. Perhaps this whole thing really is a meta statement on the cyclical nature of violence.

4 missing sisters out of 10.

Comments

One Dog and his Man

Heart of the Beast is a man and his dog against nature film. As such, it requires a lead who can be tough but also vulnerable and has the screen presence to draw the audience in without dialogue. This film has such a lead. It also has Brad Pitt. See, the star of the show really is ex-army dog Odin (played by a German Shepherd named Uber, with three of his sons helping out). Odin has metal teeth, an artificial leg and suffers from PTSD but soldiers on with the joyous spirit only a dog can muster. It's just as well, since he is the only thing holding his human, retired Special Forces Command Sergeant Major James Belmont (Pitt) together. Belmont is himself haunted by nightmares of the mission that left him and Odin as sole survivors and it's safe to say he isn't a people person. The pair are exploring the Alaskan wilderness when a potential heart attack leads to Belmont crashing his little plane and leaving them with an arduous and dangerous trek back to civilisation. That thi...

Sick in the Mud

Like its shape shifting titular character, Clayface attempts to be many things. Billed as DC's first horror movie, it is also a supervillain origin story, a modern-gothic romance, a tragedy and a crime drama. With all this in the pot, what it actually ends up feeling like is a throwback to the '90s/early 2000s era of comic book adaptations. A time of modest budgets for the genre, when studios cared less about shared world continuity and were prepared to let filmmakers have some fun with weird characters. Tom Rhys Harris stars as Matt Hagen, an actor who got out of the Gotham City slums and is now Academy Award nominated. His high flying life comes crashing down when he has a one night stand with the girlfriend of a prominent Gotham mobster and is left hideously scarred by the scorned gangster's vengeance. With his career in ruins, he finds showbiz loyalty in short supply as his manager, lawyer and possibly even his best friend quickly abandon him. Scientist Dr. Caitlyn Co...

Enter the Dragon Punch

Street Fighter 2 was a phenomenon when it blew through arcades and home consoles back in the early 90s. There have been many more instalments in the franchise since but while each one has been a big deal in the game industry, none of them have come close to penetrating pop culture the same way. It's no surprise then that Street Fighter takes most of its cues and characters from that breakout hit. Whether nostalgia for a mostly plotless thirty-plus year old game warrants a third live action adaptation, after 1994's film with the same name and 2009's Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, is another matter. One thing this iteration has going for it over those that came before is the fact it actually features a fighting tournament (the entire premise of the games), albeit fairly briefly. All the Street Fighter 2 characters make appearances (as do a couple from later games) of varying importance. Chief players are M.Bison (David Dastmalchian), evil tournament organiser looki...

The Bourne IT

The set up for The Amateur is a well worn one, a man loses his wife in a terrorist attack and goes on a mission of revenge. The twist is, that while Rami Malek does play a man with a particular set of skills, they aren't the ones you would expect. Charlie Heller is a socially awkward CIA cryptographer with precisely zero fighting ability and no experience using firearms. He is though, a technological genious who invented half the agencies cyber security and can track and predict patterns like a computer. When his blatantly shady boss, played with smug glee by Holt Mccallany, refuses to act on Charlie's info about the killers he blackmails him for some training and the green light to pursue the perpetrators himself. The two main questions are, can the mild mannered tech guy thrive in the field and is this twist on the formulae enough to carry a fairly by the numbers espionage thriller? The answer to both is, pretty much, yes. Malek is tailor made for roles like this and it'...

Dance of Death

John Wick spin off, Ballerina , swaps out Keanu Reaves (mostly) for Ana de Armas but almost everything else remains pretty similar. We still have the intricately choreographed fighting in a dark gloss colour palette, minimal plot propped up by ridiculous lore and the same waffling dialogue. Series die hards rejoice, but for someone who zoned out somewhere during Chapter 3 and was distinctly unimpressed with John Wick 4, these films are becoming something of a chore. Eve Macarro (de Armas) is orphaned at a young age when assassins break into her home in an attempt to abduct her and her father (also an assassin) dies fighting them off. She is then raised by the "Ruska Roma" (more assassins, roughly 40% of the worlds population are assassins in the world of John Wick), who train her in the arts of both ballet and murder. After somebody from the faction that killed her dad attempts to off her, she embarks on a revenge quest, despite being explicitly forbidden from doing so by R...

Predator Chadlands

After revitalising the Predator franchise with 2022's Prey, director Dan Trachtenberg brings us a very different take on the extraterrestrial big game hunter. In Predator: Badlands , the titular monster is the main character. Considering how terrible that premise could have been, we actually end up with a decent action adventure movie. Our protagonist is Dek, a Yautja (the species name of the Predators) who is considered something of a runt. Such a runt in fact, that his dad wants to kill him for being a pitiful disgrace to the clan. After his brother saves him, he makes his way to "the Death Planet" Genna to hunt a supposedly unkillable monster in order to show his father who is boss and force the rest of the clan to put some respect on his name. When he gets there he discovers that, not only is all the wildlife deadly, but Weyland-Yutani ( yes, the evil corporation from Alien) have sent a bunch of synths there to collect and weaponise his prospective trophy. He forms an...

Stars and Their Cars

Crime 101 is named for the California freeway one of the characters commits all his robberies along. It also doubles as describing his MO, he is successful because he makes sure he gets the fundamentals right every time. It can also describe the film itself, which nails the basics of making a slick crime thriller better than just about any other movie has in quite some time. The professional thief is Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth), a meticulous planner whose jobs never lead to anyone being hurt and are so well executed that nobody even has any idea they are all the work of one man. Nobody that is, except for Mark Ruffalo's Detective Lou Lubesnick, who is determined to catch the "101 Robber" even though his obsession is starting to lead to him being ostracised in the precinct. Both characters come into contact with high value insurance broker Sharon (Halle Berry) as Mike plans a big score and Lou joins the dots in an attempt to track him down. A potential fly in the ointmen...

Straight Outta The Further

Insidious has always been a fairly low tier horror franchise. The Conjuring's budget cousin, if you will. If you look at it that way then Insidious: Out of the Further is actually fairly good. It's certainly the most entertaining the series has been since the first instalment. Like that first breakout hit from back in 2010, Out of the Further has a much stronger first half than it does second. We start with a fairly harrowing scene of a young girl named Gemma witnessing the grisly death of her erratically behaving mother. We then fast forward a couple of decades to find the adult Gemma working as a dentist while raising a young girl of her own, yet still living in her childhood home. Spooky things begin to happen as some unfriendly OAPs start stalking the neighbourhood and Gemma tries to keep her daughter safe while worrying she is becoming like her mother. In typical Insidious fashion, things become more silly than scary as the plot is revealed and we build towards a ludicr...

Rooms Got Back

Backrooms was never likely to struggle financially. The last couple of years have taught us that if you can turn Gen Z out, box office success tends to follow. Given the viral subject matter (more on that later) a younger audience were always likely to show up in more than enough numbers to turn a profit on a moderately budgeted horror film. The question facing studio A24 and 20 year old (yes that's right, 20 year old) director Kane Parsons was what to do with the free hit. Do you double down on the premise in order to satiate the TikTok crowd? Or do you layer on the themes and character in order to create an "elevated" horror more in keeping with the A24 brand? It seems they were never quite able to commit to one approach or the other and the final product falls unsatisfyingly in between. For those unaware of the Backrooms phenomenon, it began life as a creepypasta, modern folklore where people share an unsettling picture online and create stories around it. The idea wi...

An Apple a Day

Bad Apples opens with a colourful procession of apples making their way through a processing facility. There is a problem, though: stowing away is a solitary child's trainer, hidden amongst the apples and about to jam up the machine and bring the whole enterprise to a halt. Turns out a bad kid can do the same to a classroom, as poor Miss Maria Spencer (Saoirse Ronan) knows only too well. This darkly comic satire doesn't go much deeper than the above metaphor but it entertains and is propelled by a trio of strong performances. The offending trainer belongs to Danny (Eddie Waller), a disruptive pupil whose out of control behaviour has the timid Maria on the verge of losing her job. When Danny seriously injures another pupil and gets suspended, Maria goes to see his dad but ends up in a scuffle with the troublemaking youngster that leads to her imprisoning him in her basement. With the rascal out of the picture and nobody missing him much, things start to look pretty rosy for t...

Dan Says its Alright

Search This Blog