The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024)

[Alex...]

Title: The Strangers: Chapter 1

Tagline: It All Started With A Knock.

Genre: Horror, Thriller

Director: Renny Harlin

Cast: Madelaine Petsch, Froy Gutierrez, Gabriel Basso, Ema Horvath, Richard Brake, Rachel Shenton, Ella Bruccoleri, George Young, Janis Ahern, Pedro Leandro, Ryan Brown, Ben Cartwright, Florian Clare, Miles Yekinni, Rebecka Johnston, Stevee Davies, Brooke Lena Johnson, Brian Law, Rafaella Biscayn, Pablo Sandstorm, Sara Freedland, J.R. Esposito, Milo Callaghan

Release: 2024

Runtime: 90

Plot: After their car breaks down, a couple driving cross-country to begin a new life in the Pacific Northwest is forced to spend the night in a secluded rental, where they are terrorized from dusk till dawn by three masked strangers.

 

[Alex...]

‘The Strangers Chapter 1’ Set To Scare In Early Summer 2024

Riverdale star Madelaine Petsch just dropped a teaser and revealed the date to Renny Harlin’s remake of the 2008 movie, The Strangers, which will haunt theaters on May 17, 2024. More movies, …

deadline.com

 

[TravisR]

Maybe it's because I'm alone but that trailer just scared the hell outta me.

 

[Alex...]

 

[Alex...]

 

[Malcolm R]

The trailer already lost me when the first knock comes and the porch is so dark you cannot see any features at all on the person, yet later when the man in the mask forces his way in, there's plenty of ambient light to see his features/mask. Also, the opening scenes seem to establish that this entire town is weird, not just the trio of masked murderers, which seems to play against the uneasiness established in the original when everything seemed perfectly "normal" until the murderers showed up.

I'll probably skip this unless the word of mouth is stellar.

 

[Alex...]

Cinemacon footage descript

Spoiler

Lionsgate presented an extended sneak peek at The Strangers: Chapter 1 at CinemaCon 2024. The film is described as an origin story of how the strangers came to be. We see Madeleine Petch from Riverdale as the movie’s innocent lead entering a cabin in the woods. Suddenly, someone appears behind her while she’s playing the piano. She and her partner hear strange knocks at the door. When she looks through the keyhole, an axe almost hits her head through the door. We then get a montage of the duo trying to escape as the strangers come in, followed by cuts of the strangers tormenting the leads in some horrifying ways. The footage presents a film that is much darker and pulse-pounding than some audiences are probably expecting.

 

[Alex...]

 

[Malcolm R]

Deadline pans the film. Sounds like we're all better off to just watch the original film again. I hate horror films where characters act completely stupid just to keep the film going. Watched Scream VI last week and had issues with some similar writing in there.

The Strangers: Chapter 1 is everything wrong in the horror genre. The film suffers from zero build-up, a lack of atmospheric tension, and an overreliance on cheap jump scares. The characters make a series of poor decisions, a hallmark of lazy writing that propels the plot forward with little regard for logic or audience engagement. Cohen and Freedland’s script introduces nothing new, and the worst offense is that the film is tediously drab, with no real excitement for the first 30 to 45 minutes.

Maya and Jeff are written as painfully unaware and unprepared individuals, lacking any sense of self-preservation. They are archetypal horror characters who make nonsensical choices purely to drive the plot. This lack of character development results in a narrative devoid of creativity or originality. While elevated horror is not a necessity, a modicum of ingenuity is. Horror tropes can be effective and entertaining if utilized properly, but The Strangers: Chapter 1 fails spectacularly in this regard.

‘The Strangers: Chapter 1’ Review: Horror Tropes Gone Wrong In Renny Harlin’s Latest

'The Strangers: Chapter 1' Review: Horror Tropes Gone Wrong

deadline.com