When it was announced that Lionsgate was rebooting Bryan Bertino's generally well-liked 2008 home invasion thriller, “The Strangers,” that was standard entertainment news. These days, some old movie or property gets a relaunch announced about every week. When it was revealed that Lionsgate was planning a whole trilogy based off this mildly popular movie from sixteen years ago, it seemed like putting the horse before the cart but that's also hardly unprecedented in Hollywood. Except all three films were already written and would be shot back-to-back. A risky proposition, as the first might flop, sticking the studio with two sequels there's no demand for. Especially since these movies were being directed by Renny Harlin, whose days as a blockbuster hit-maker have long, long since passed. Well, “The Strangers: Chapter 1” made 48 million against an 8 million dollar budget, giving Lionsgate the confidence to release “Chapter 2” in theaters this September. Despite most people having hated the previous one. I thought “Chapter 1” wasn't totally without its merits and so I foolishly give this second part of the trilogy a look.
And so we return to the small town of Venus, Oregon, where Maya and her husband had their AirBNB invaded by a trio of masked murders. Having survived the night of torment, the battered and injured Maya awakens in the nearest hospital. She is questioned by the local sheriff, who strikes her as suspicious. That night, she hears screams from the hallway outside her hospital room. The Strangers have followed her and are determined to finish the job they started. Despite having stitches in her gut from a prior stab wound, Maya is chased all around the hospital and the surrounding area. She takes shelter in the woods, the ceaseless pursuit by the three maniacs on-going. Maya becomes increasingly convinced that the entire town is in on these murders, which seem to have gone back years ago.
Every slasher movie fan will recognize that portion of the film, when most of the warm bodies have been cleaved through. When it is only the killer and the final girl left, a long fight for survival erupting between the seemingly unstoppable murderer and the one young woman that has escaped their wrath thus far. Ya know, the part of “Halloween” when Laurie Strode is in the house by herself with Michael Myers. “The Strangers: Chapter 2” essentially attempts to build an entire movie around this portion of the slasher formula. The Strangers are stalking and chasing Maya and they won't stop until they've caught her. It's not the worst idea for a movie. The first act of “Chapter 2” recalls “Halloween II” with its hospital setting. Sequences in which the girl hides inside a morgue storage locker or behind big metal jugs in the basement aren't half-bad. While watching these moments, I found myself wondering if perhaps this might actually work.
That otherwise quite good scene of Maya in the cold storage locker, the lead Stranger lurking inches away from her face, is cut short when an orderly sticks his head in and subsequently gets axed. This, unfortunately, sets up a pattern that nearly the entire movie then follows. Maya will be chased by the killers to a new location: A random horse ranch, a derelict car sitting in the middle of the forest, the AirBNB from the previous movie, an apartment where her nurse and three roommates are living. A person or a few will appear to help her. They will reveal a tiny tidbit of information about the bigger picture here before the Strangers appear again, murdering them and starting the cycle again. By the third time “Chapter 2” is repeating this cycle, when a detective is introduced only to be unceremoniously offed in the very next scene, this blatant repetition has become unintentionally funny. By the fourth time it happens, it has become tedious. The sequel feels the need to throw multiple vehicular chases between these identical set-ups and pay-offs.
“Chapter 2” essentially repeating the same scenes over and over again until it reaches a feature length run time is not the only sign that this entire trilogy enterprise might have been a misguided affair. Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland's script often feels like an obnoxiously drawn-out tease for something more interesting. A random old woman or that aforementioned detective promise to reveal the truth before being silenced. The sequel constantly toys with the possibility that the quartet of shifty weirdos that help Maya out are connected to the murderers. These are narrative red herrings, cut short so the film can have the heroine run and hide and sometimes fight-off the unflappable villains again. It reminds me of all those shitty streaming series. Ya know, the ones that are six or eight hours long but truthfully only had enough real story for two hours, necessitating extensive padding and repeated hints that the plot might genuinely move forward at some point. The script's desperate attempts to stretch this premise out eventually lurches towards unintentional comedy. Would you believe me if I said this sequel to the reboot/remake of “The Strangers” features in the middle of the runtime, for no particular reason, an extended sequence where someone is attacked by a feral hog? It's true and it's stupid and it's also, perhaps not coincidentally, the only time this movie truly reaches any degree of schlocky amusement.
Since watching “The Strangers: Chapter 2,” I can't decide if this out-of-the-blue homage to “Hogzilla” is made more or less silly by the subsequent reveal that it's also part of the masked killers' master plan. Part of what made Bertino's “The Strangers” effective was that we knew nothing about the titular menace. They struck without explanation, their motives unknowable and their justification totally random. That spooky bit of ambiguity clearly won't do in our era of fan wiki lore dumps and explainer videos. Since some jack-ass exec decided this story had to be three movies, “Chapter 2” can't actually tell us much about the Secret Origins of the Strangers. The brief glimpses we get are not compelling. Some sort of devil-kid little sociopath pact or whatever, with shades of Mormonism, that isn't as creepy as the briefest suggestion of a Manson-like cult from the original. Truly, did even the biggest fan of “The Strangers” actually care about how Tamara is? Or what the greater significance behind Pin-Up Girl's choice in mask? Explaining what these three want and where they come is obviously antithetical to what makes them scary but I guess we shouldn't expect subtle from a lame-brain attempt at brand extension like this. Harlin's trilogy has clearly failed in intriguing us about the story behind the Strangers. When a mask comes off in the final scene, it plays as if this is a shocking revelation. Instead, I found myself asking “who the hell is that?” before vaguely connecting it with a background player in an earlier scene.
My earlier comparison of these newer “Strangers” to a half-assed streaming show is apt. The movie ends with an on-screen “To Be Continued” ellipses and a preview of the next film, truly following in the footsteps of bad television. What we can expect next time, promises to finally answer how the town's history and Richard Brake as the creepy sheriff tie into all of this, are not exactly promising. “The Strangers: Chapter 2” isn't the most wretched motion picture I've seen this fall. Madelaine Petsch has about twelve lines of dialogue in the entire movie. Instead, she gives a mostly physical performance, her final girl on the run nearly the whole time and taking an improbable amount of punishment. That's kind of interesting. (Though a gratuitous shot of Petsch in her underwear suggest she probably wasn't cast for her acting.) The stalking through the hospital and horse stables aren't bad, before we understand that the sequel has no further tricks up its sleeve. I didn't despise it but it's surely not good. Also not good has been the box office so far, suggesting “The Strangers: Chapter 3” might wind up going straight-to-Tubi. But I guess I'm on the hook for that piece of shit, since I've watched the other two already. They should include a few more feral hog attacks in that one. [5/10]
And so we return to the small town of Venus, Oregon, where Maya and her husband had their AirBNB invaded by a trio of masked murders. Having survived the night of torment, the battered and injured Maya awakens in the nearest hospital. She is questioned by the local sheriff, who strikes her as suspicious. That night, she hears screams from the hallway outside her hospital room. The Strangers have followed her and are determined to finish the job they started. Despite having stitches in her gut from a prior stab wound, Maya is chased all around the hospital and the surrounding area. She takes shelter in the woods, the ceaseless pursuit by the three maniacs on-going. Maya becomes increasingly convinced that the entire town is in on these murders, which seem to have gone back years ago.
That otherwise quite good scene of Maya in the cold storage locker, the lead Stranger lurking inches away from her face, is cut short when an orderly sticks his head in and subsequently gets axed. This, unfortunately, sets up a pattern that nearly the entire movie then follows. Maya will be chased by the killers to a new location: A random horse ranch, a derelict car sitting in the middle of the forest, the AirBNB from the previous movie, an apartment where her nurse and three roommates are living. A person or a few will appear to help her. They will reveal a tiny tidbit of information about the bigger picture here before the Strangers appear again, murdering them and starting the cycle again. By the third time “Chapter 2” is repeating this cycle, when a detective is introduced only to be unceremoniously offed in the very next scene, this blatant repetition has become unintentionally funny. By the fourth time it happens, it has become tedious. The sequel feels the need to throw multiple vehicular chases between these identical set-ups and pay-offs.
Since watching “The Strangers: Chapter 2,” I can't decide if this out-of-the-blue homage to “Hogzilla” is made more or less silly by the subsequent reveal that it's also part of the masked killers' master plan. Part of what made Bertino's “The Strangers” effective was that we knew nothing about the titular menace. They struck without explanation, their motives unknowable and their justification totally random. That spooky bit of ambiguity clearly won't do in our era of fan wiki lore dumps and explainer videos. Since some jack-ass exec decided this story had to be three movies, “Chapter 2” can't actually tell us much about the Secret Origins of the Strangers. The brief glimpses we get are not compelling. Some sort of devil-kid little sociopath pact or whatever, with shades of Mormonism, that isn't as creepy as the briefest suggestion of a Manson-like cult from the original. Truly, did even the biggest fan of “The Strangers” actually care about how Tamara is? Or what the greater significance behind Pin-Up Girl's choice in mask? Explaining what these three want and where they come is obviously antithetical to what makes them scary but I guess we shouldn't expect subtle from a lame-brain attempt at brand extension like this. Harlin's trilogy has clearly failed in intriguing us about the story behind the Strangers. When a mask comes off in the final scene, it plays as if this is a shocking revelation. Instead, I found myself asking “who the hell is that?” before vaguely connecting it with a background player in an earlier scene.
Nazareno Cruz y el lobo, las palomas y los gritos
Back in the days before birth control, when infant morality was high and large families were often necessary to operate farms, having seven or more kids was not so uncommon. Nor was the possibility of that seventh son begetting seven sons himself. Where exactly the idea that such an individual was blessed or cursed in some way began, we can't say. The belief likely has its roots in Mesopotamia, where seven was a sacred number, which was reflected in Christian concepts like the seven deadly sins. Whatever the origins, the superstition has spread throughout many different cultures and taken many forms. In England and Ireland, the seventh son of a seventh son was said to be healers or to have psychic visions. Italian folklore speaks of a seventh son able to ward off snakes. Not every example was so lucky. Seventh sons were also often said to be cursed, to become vampires or werewolves. The latter idea would inspire Argentinian director Leonardo Favio to create “Nazareno Cruz and the Wolf.” The film would become very successful in its home country, the most popular locally made film in Argentinian history by some measurements.
The heavily pregnant Fidelia prepares for the birth of her seventh child. Her husband and her six previous sons set out to tend to the herd in a thunderstorm. The subsequent flood results in each of them drowning. The local lechiguana warns her that, should the child be a son, he will be cursed to become a werewolf. Fidelia does have a son, whom she names Nazareno Cruz. Despite the hardships of being raised by a single mother and told his whole life that he's cursed, Nazareno grows up to be a boisterous, kind man that is loved by all who meet him. While at a bonfire party one night, he meets the beautiful maiden Griselda. The two immediately fall in love. Afterwards, Nazareno is approached by a mysterious stranger. The man informs him that the curse Cruz has heard about his whole life is real. Now that he's fallen in love, he will become a wolf at the next full moon. The stranger says the curse can be avoided, and he'll receive treasures untold, if Nazareno gives up his love for Griselda. Recognizing the traveler as the devil himself, he refuses the offer. And as the moon rises in the night sky the next night, Nazareno Cruz becomes a bloodthirsty beast.
In accordance with this, "Nazareno Cruz and the Wolf" is told as a fairy tale with an operatic emotional range. There are a lot of shouted lines of dialogue or sustained moments of laughing or yelling. When Nazareno first meets Griselda, it results in several minutes of the camera gazing at her while the sweeping romantic theme from Juan José García Caffi and Jorge Candia plays. That cascading choir piece of music plays repeatedly, alongside the score's other oversized leitmotifs. The characters will often repeat their dialogue, as if they are also reoccurring melodies within a song that establishes their simple roles in the story. When Nazareno decides he could never give up his lady love, it results in a long sequence of the two messily kissing in the waves. This kind of bigger-than-life execution can be a bit hard to enjoy but, once you get on its wave-length, it's interesting.
To call “Nazareno Cruz y el lobo” a riff on classical folk lores is an accurate statement. The script – written by Favio and Jorge Zuhair Jury, based on a radio program by Juan Carlos Chiappe – actually seems to hearken back to pre-Christian indigenous mythology in Argentina. This is noticeable in how the old witch is called the Lechiguana, a word taken from the Mapudungun language. Unless most depictions of those who converse with spirits or know of the occult, this witch is not an evil figure. She is a neutral one. She refers to God and the devil in a similar way, saying either can bring bad luck depending on the weather. This holds through with the film's depiction of the devil. He tempts Cruz with gold and asks him to give up his earthly love. At the same time, we later see this same figure – who goes so far as to admit he's the devil – as a benevolent leader of an underground system of other magical beings. This devil is an ultimately sympathetic figure, attempting to take the protagonist out of a world that will never accept him fully.
When it first started airing, the 1985 revival of “The Twilight Zone” would feature multiple stories in each episode. Rather than evenly split each hour between two twenty minute narratives, the length of the segments would vary. Some episodes would squeeze in as many as three stories. This presentation wold eventually be dropped and it's not too hard to see why. When squeezing in multiple scenarios of uneven length, it meant one segment was bound to overshadow the others. This is the case with the sixth episode. Most of the hour is taken up by “A Message from Charity,” a cute but distinctly not macabre tale of telepathic romance between a teenage boy in the eighties and a puritan girl in the 1700s. But nobody remembers that one. Instead, the ten minute short that precedes it, “Examination Day,” made a much stronger impression on audiences. Not long ago at all, I saw a TikTok going on about how shocking its twist ending remains.
Like “The Obsolete Man” and a few classic “Zone” episodes before it, “Examination Day” takes place in some weird sci-fi future. In this setting, everyone in the country is forced to undertake an intelligence exam when they turn twelve years old. Little Dickie Jordan, a bright and enthusiastic boy, is hoping to do well on the test. His parents, Richard and Ruth, are much more hesitant. Something as them worried. The day after his birthday, Dickie is taken to a government facility and given a truth serum, to make sure he doesn't tell any lies on the test. To say what happens next would take most of the punch out of this one but it's hard to discuss the episode much otherwise. So, look away now if you don't want a forty year old TV show spoiled for you: Dickie's parents are informed that their son scored too high on the intelligence test and, in accordance with government laws to keep the public servile and content, the boy has been executed.
Here's an episode of “The Addams Family” that builds its plot around some of the show's memorably bizarre props. “The Addams Policy” starts with the family playing with their latest acquisition: A hand-held flamethrower. While attempting to light Gomez' cigar, Uncle Fester accidentally sets the stuffed polar bear in the living room ablaze. Distraught, Morticia immediately seeks out their insurance agent. That turns out to be Mr. Digby, last seen living next door and now in the employ of old Mr. Henson. Digby is natural confused and frightened by the Addams' antics. Henson is so enraged by his employee agreeing to insure the eccentric Addams that he immediately fires him. Gomez and Morticia's solution is to simply open up their own insurance office, with Digby's name on the door. Naturally, the family has an equally quirky reaction to such a mercenary business.
As I've drawn closer to the conclusion of season two, how formulaic “The Addams Family” could be has become more apparent. I'm not talking about the reliance on running gags or guest stars getting freaked out. Those have always been a part of the show. Instead, a lot of season two episodes seem to be revolving around the set-up of sticking the family into an otherwise routine job or premise. We had “What if the Addams ran a school?” not that long ago and “What if Morticia was a decorator?” before that. This episode is “What if the Addams ran an insurance company?” It leads to the expected bits, of the family insuring only the most uninsurable rejects or Fester dressing up and playing doctor with a disguised Mr. Henson. I'm not saying I didn't chuckle from time to time – Cousin Itt has an amusing cameo in this one – but the repetitive quality of these ideas are beginning to show.
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