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Im a bit split in between Chapter 1 and 2, same as on my previous post none of this are better than the original although I do prefer Chapter 2, I think was a bit just a bit better but I can understand how this can be a massive disappointment to the audience considering they have now done two movies that do not cover up half of how good the first one was. Today I watch most of this movie while I was waiting to get my hair cut and it had me checking the guy before me and watch multiple times wondering when something interesting was actually going to happen. When they announced this trilogy being shot back to back I got excited thinking they had some killer ideas to justify three whole movies, turns out they had nothing and this second one proves it completely and now my hopes are lower for the upcoming and final Chapter 3. The concept of one long chase from hospital to woods sounded cool but everything about it felt rushed and lazy, the kills are mostly weak cutaway shots like some PG 13 trash, the Shelly backstory adds nothing and makes the strangers less scary, plus there is this bizarre wild boar scene that is so out of place I still cannot believe they included it. Madelaine Petsch does her absolute best with what she is given but the script offers nothing beyond just surviving, no character goals or creativity in how she escapes these masked killers and it shows. Everything feels pointless like it could have been twenty minutes tacked onto Chapter 1 instead of its own movie, then it ends with to be continued a big wtf moment for me so my only hope is that Chapter 3 does its own thing but most likely will be a continuation of whats going on unless they go with a bunch of flashbacks that gives more context but I dont see anything hidden that needs much explaining. They took terrifying characters from the original 2008 movie and turned them into boring nothing villains I do not care about anymore, that is actually an achievement when you think about it because those characters used to be scary.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28671344/
- Platform: STARz
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This whole thing picks up right after Maya wakes in the hospital following the attack that killed her fiance Ryan, she is processing everything while knowing these killers are still out there hunting her down. The hospital sequence works decently for the most part and its here where I think it was slightly better, we got Maya sneaking around avoiding the strangers who got inside and are killing staff members but then it becomes this repetitive loop where she hides runs hides runs with zero variation whatsoever and it gets old fast. They try adding emotional weight by showing her trying to escape through the morgue where she climbs into one of those body storage racks but it is heavy handed and obvious, we get she is traumatized but come on show us something new instead of recycling every horror movie cliche. Once she escapes things get even more boring because now she is running through woods while killers chase at a casual pace like they do not really care about catching her at all or they just already know where she is going to end up, there are this long stretches where absolutely nothing happens at the woods. Maya literally walks and try to stitch wounds, then suddenly a stranger pops up for a quick jumpscare before vanishing again for fifteen minutes, I kept waiting for it to kick into high gear and deliver something wild but it never does. She runs into random people throughout the night including Nurse Danica and her roommates Gregory, Chris and Wayne, and you are never sure if these people are actually trying to help or if they are part of some bigger conspiracy in this town, now thats is the only topic that might data dump it on Chapter 3 like the entire town is one big trap where everyone participates. I kinda do this when a movie is not that good, expecting a twist or surprise that saves it but no clever twists or surprises just the same stuff over and over until the credits finally roll and you feel like you wasted your time.
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The kills are such a letdown for a slasher trying to be dark and brutal based on marketing, most deaths happen off screen with weird angles hiding actual violence so you see someone grabbed then cut to their corpse on the ground a minute later. A few moments show some gore like crossbow killings or stabbings but nothing stands out or makes you think damn that was crazy, just standard stuff done better in tons of other horror movies over the years. The strangers are not scary this time, because they get too much screen time and this Shelly backstory nobody wanted or asked for at all, flashbacks reveal she killed a girl named Tamara when they were kids at school, beat her to death with a rock over childhood jealousy and now she grew up as Pin Up Girl one of the masked killers. It makes much sense and ruins the mystery that made the originals work so well but I guess thats the jist of this story to slowly reveal who the hell are this people, their motives, their reasons and why the damn masks, but I think more of the audience is more used to the idea that the whole point was random faceless killers with no motive beyond because you were home. Giving them names and tragic pasts turns them into regular slasher villains that are not interesting anymore, they also introduce random characters showing up five minutes before dying like this state trooper Billy Bufford and the horse farm owner named Shar. None of these people matter or add anything they just pad body count and waste time filling up runtime that already feels way too long, Gregory at least tries to help Maya by telling her she is the only one who survived these killers but then he leaves and gets killed anyway so what was the point of that whole interaction.
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Now one or probably the only memorable part of the movie and not necesarly because it was good, its the wild boar scene where this completely lost me and went from boring to actually laughable, what the hell were they thinking with this decision. Maya is running through woods and finds an abandoned campsite, builds a fire treating wounds which makes no sense because smoke gives away her position, then out of nowhere a giant wild pig attacks her for five straight minutes and it is absurd. She fights this thing with sticks eventually killing it with a knife, then I was thinking is this the strangers or some nature survival movie now, it feels like a different movie breaking any suspense built up to that point. Watching Madelaine Petsch wrestle a CGI boar biting her leg and stepping on her back looks ridiculous, after killing it there is a long face shot where I guess we think she has become a killer too or something deep but it comes across silly and tryhard instead. The movie keeps throwing random elements that do not fit like Maya showing up at the cabin from Chapter 1 and changing clothes, the ambulance crash at the end where Pin Up Girl flies through the windshield and dies after Maya stabbed her in the neck with scissors, meanwhile Scarecrow and Dollface just show up to mourn her while Maya watches from the woods. The script could not decide what kind of movie it wanted so it tried everything at once which is disappointing, Renny Harlin proved he can direct good stuff before but this feels lazy like he had no real ideas making a full sequel work at all.
#skiptvads, #inleo, #hive, #strangers, #chapter, #horror, #slasher, #sequel, #maya, #hospital, #chase, #woods, #killers, #dollface, #tamara, #backstory, #disappointing, #boring, #trilogy, #maline, #pesh, #deaths, #offscreen, #boar, #scene, #ambulance, #review, #rating
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