May 31 is Cinema Lovers Day when one can watch films for ₹99. Yes, we could have watched Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, one more time, but duty calls and so here we were in a cinema filled with a screaming, giggling audience. And even though Renny Harlin’s reimagining of Bryan Bertino’s home invasion chiller, The Strangers (2008), was thin on thrills, chills and spills, the holiday atmosphere with a girl in the audience screaming louder than the woman on screen made for a fun movie experience.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 follows the beats of the original fairly faithfully. Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and Ryan (Froy Gutierrez) are on a cross-country road trip to Portland, Oregon, where Maya is interviewing for a job with good prospects. Maya and Ryan have been dating for five years and probably need to have that conversation to move to the next level. Hungry, the couple take a detour to a small town called Venus for a meal at the local diner, where they see notices of a man who went missing 10 years ago. It would have been nice to see Jack Reacher doing fractal mathematics while drinking a bottomless cup of coffee, but well.
The Strangers: Chapter 1
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Madelaine Petsch, Froy Gutierrez, Gabriel Basso, Ema Horvath
Storyline: A couple is lost in a creepy town and when they are forced to spend the night at an Airbnb, they are besieged by maniacal, masked killers
Runtime: 91 minutes
The townsfolk look askance at the couple and all the creep chords are in place much before the car packs up. A mechanic offers to take a look at the car and tells Maya and Ryan that a particular part needs replacing, and the car will be road-worthy only the next day. He suggests the two spend the night at an Airbnb in a secluded place in the woods. Shelly (Ema Horvath), from the diner, offers to drop the couple at the Airbnb, which is beautiful if super lonely. Just as Maya and Ryan are trying to make good of their enforced break, comes a loud knock on the door.
Every horror movie cliché from axes at the door and misplaced inhalers to things scurrying away from the corner of your eye and the old faithful of scary showers (that should have gone down the drain with Ramsay horror flicks of yore) pile on thick and fast.
Director Harlin — who has been simultaneously shooting Chapters 2 and 3 of The Strangers, is a veteran of massive action blockbusters including Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger as well as horror movies, (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Exorcist: The Beginning) — is in familiar territory but does not wade in with confident gusto. All hoping for Petsch (Riverdale’s Cheryl Blossom) to be cut in two mid-scream like Samuel L. Jackson, who was gobbled up by a furious shark mid-monologue in Harlin’s Deep Blue Sea, are bound to be disappointed.
The scares provided by the three strangers — Scarecrow (Matúš Lajčák) Dollface (Olivia Kreutzova) and Pin-Up Girl (Letizia Fabbri) — are middling. Everything about The Strangers: Chapter 1 is average… neither amazing nor so dreadful that one can actually have fun.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 is currently running in theatres