The Strangers: Chapter 2, a horror sequel from Die Hard 2 and The Misfits filmmaker Renny Harlin, is making its way to theaters this week — and the road it has taken is an interesting one. Filmed back-to-back-to-back with The Strangers Chapter 1 and Chapter 3, the film picks up where the previous installment, released last year, left off. Nevertheless, the months in between releases led to some significant changes.
According to producer Courtney Solomon, audience feedback to The Strangers: Chapter 1 informed reshoots on Chapter 2, and helped shape the series going forward in a way that they hope will please fans of the franchise.
“By shooting all three at the [same] time, we thought we had the layout right, because obviously we had a giant, almost 250-page script,” Solomon told The Beat. “We shot those films, and we put those films together, and we put those films together, and then we put one of those films out, and we got a bunch of response on that one film. We saw the other two films, and we were like, ‘Well, we can do better.’ There’s a bunch of things that we didn’t think of in the first place, and so then we went back to that drawing board, having already cut together the movies, and actually did reshoots, and re-cut-together the movies, and refinished the movies, and did it like that. As much as that was a whole shit-ton of work, the audience is going to be appreciative of it, and it elevated what this is to an entirely different level, in my opinion, in the right vein. There was a real benefit doing it that way, because you had a pause between your other two movies, but you already had the movies made.”
Madelaine Petsch in The Strangers: Chapter 2The Strangers: Chapter 1 was, in effect, a remake of The Strangers (2008), with Riverdale star Madelaine Petsch in the Liv Tyler role. The trilogy will tell a story of what happened after that first fateful night…but not everyone was thrilled with that approach.
“On the first movie, to be candid, we took heat because it was basically a full remake — some people said shot-for-shot — of the original Strangers,” Solomon explained. “Of course, to [longtime fans], the surprise value of that movie could never exist again. So then our movie falls flat…but there was valuable information to be learned from that. The framework of the story we were trying to tell was always what happened after that first movie. It was like an alternate universe to The Strangers. So the original Strangers, and [2018’s] Prey at Night, lives wherever they live. Strangers Chapter 1, 2, and 3 starts with the same story as the original Strangers — but then it’s about what happens the next day, if Liv Tyler’s character had survived. In our case, it’s Maya. That’s the story we’re trying to tell, so that didn’t change, but then we looked at stuff and we said, ‘I think we can do more that people are really going to appreciate and really respond to now that we get into the uncharted universe of The Strangers that nobody has ever seen before.'”
While the filmmakers have taken audience feedback into account, The Strangers: Chapter 1 actually performed more or less as you would expect with audiences, if the Rotten Tomatoes audience score is to be believed. The movie has a 45% “Popcornmeter” score — compared to 48% for 2008’s The Strangers and 36% for Strangers: Prey At Night. Where it falls down compared to its predecessors is with film critics, with only 21% giving Chapter 1 positive marks, as opposed to 50% for The Strangers and 40% for Prey at Night.
The Strangers: Chapter 2 arrives in theaters on Friday.
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