The Strangers: Chapter 1

Directed by Renny Harlin, The Strangers: Chapter 1 follows a young couple (Madelaine Petsch’s Maya and Froy Gutierrez’s Ryan) as they’re terrorized by masked psychos during a stay at a small-town cabin. It’s exceedingly (and perhaps excessively) familiar territory that’s employed to periodically watchable yet progressively underwhelming effect by Harlin, as the filmmaker, armed with a script by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland, delivers a deliberate thriller that gets off to a less-than-promising start – with Maya and Ryan’s initial arrival at the aforementioned small town just about as silly and unconvincing as one could possibly imagine (ie how is everybody in this community super creepy?) There’s little doubt, then, that The Strangers: Chapter 1 benefits from a tense stretch detailing the masked psychos’ initial arrival and Maya and Ryan’s attempts at escaping (which are often comically wrong-headed), although it’s equally clear that the cat-and-mouse focused midsection grows less and less interesting (and more and more tedious) as time progresses – with the dimly-lit atmosphere paving the way for a let’s-get-on-with-it-already midsection and second half. By the time the routine, by-the-numbers third act rolls around, The Strangers: Chapter 1 has confirmed its place as a far-from-fresh endeavor whose negative attributes ultimately outweigh its positives.

** out of ****