Okay so. I don’t know why this exists, and the movie struggles to justify its existence. Less shocking than the original, less fun than Prey at Night, The Strangers: Chapter 1 is just doing the same thing again but… less good.

It’s not completely without merit. As unoriginal as the script is (seriously, we’ve seen this all before many times), I did find the filmmaking pretty effective. A number of the jump scares got me (though there’s an overuse of the jump scare ‘sting’ sound effect), and the rise of tension leading to the first proper attack was properly suspenseful. 

This is not a bad movie exactly, I just really don’t get why it’s here. Making The Strangers a franchise was a dumb idea from the start, but Prey at Night made the most of it by completely changing the tone. Now, to announce you’re making a Strangers trilogy, all shot back-to-back, is crazy. But that’s where I’m also excited. There’s a chance that Chapter 1 is just laying the groundwork for the next two movies to actually do something interesting and new. That remains to be seen. If that ends up being the case, I’ll forgive this movie’s sins a little easier.

I must say that my biggest gripe is the setting. The last two movies were scary partly because they were set in places that were ordinary, not immediately threatening. So the home invasion aspect felt like an actual invasion. The suburbia of the first movie, the trailer park of the second. This one, however, takes place in a backwoods town where every inhabitant is menacing, playing into the “scary hillbilly” trope, which I must say is one of my least favourite horror tropes. What is this, Wrong Turn? It felt completely wrong for The Strangers. 

Anyway, why 3 stars? I admit that I was pretty scared and on edge for a good chunk of the runtime. Very curious to see how the sequels go…