Why do we do this? [Fantastic Fest]

“Foreigners-Chapter 2” manages to be a slight improvement compared to “Chapter 1”, which does not say much, but at least he has this for himself while we are heading to the final of this remake / prequel / sequelae / sequelae / alternative. The return director Renny Harlin and the writing duo Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland make the interesting choice to pivot from the invasion of the house to the horror of survival, which makes unexpected decorations and exciting sequences in the woods – including a piece of fun animal set. Unfortunately, the film suffers from being repetitive in its sets, forcing bad choice of the main character. But the biggest error “foreigners – Chapter 2” are that it spends a lot of time telling us the substantive framework of titular foreigners.

Yes, it’s true, we now know what foreigners looked like as a child, and even why they started to kill. Now building a mythology is not necessarily bad, and also does not give your masked murderous trio either. But to show their first murder and give it a goal other than “because you were at home” purely betrays the thesis “random killings” of the film (which is once again repeated in an opening text spitting statistics on foreigners who kill people at random).

By taking a page of “Halloween II”, the film takes place a few minutes after the end of “Chapter 1”, with Maya Maya Lucas of Madelaine Petsch at the hospital after surviving a brutal attack by Dollface, Man in The Mask and Pin-Up Girl. As the city dwellers learn that there was a survivor of the last murder at random in their remote city, Maya is on another visit to her Pochants. From there, the film becomes a game of cat and mouse while Maya crosses the woods of Oregon, pushing the trio of killing, the elements and other dangers.

Harlin is competent with regard to the survival aspects of the script, passing longer taken and steadicam while Maya runs for his life in the hospital, more frantic cuts and camera movements in the woods. Now that the surprise factor has disappeared and that attempts at murder are not exactly random, “foreigners – Chapter 2” Speaks wisely a large part of the execution with Maya in front of surviving in the woods rather than trying to escape capture. Forget torture or shot and swords – the most horrible thing that occurs in this film implies a simple recovery of injuries, the sound design doing a good job to make the public want to crawl deeply in their seats.

Unfortunately, “The Strangers: Chapter 2” collapses by nature being part of a planned trilogy. Who knows, maybe everything will pay when the last entry will arrive and we will come back to the confusing choices made in the first two and will see the overview. But as it stands, these first two films do not succeed as an autonomous story, and as follow -up not only “Chapter 1”, but the original film of 2008 by Bryan Bertino “, Chapter 2” feels just as a too big left turn. As mentioned, the film tries to explain the origins of foreigners, slowly building a conspiracy and a cycle of more important random murders, while making us known the three people under the masks. The problem is that giving them stories is to remove the randomness from the murders and give us real motivation for murders looks like a complete betrayal of the franchise.

With a fairly steep cut in black and a mid-credit teases “chapter 3”, it is clear that Harlin and the company consider this as a singular story told in three chapters, which has more to say that “do not open your door to foreigners”. The problem is that, as a singular film, “The Strangers – Chapter 2” looks like a false step. It is an improvement simply because this trilogy started quite badly, but nevertheless a horror of survival without inspiration with repetitive decorations, choices of confusing characters and a mythology which has the impression of erasing the reason even for the reason for its franchise in the first place.

/ Film assessment: 4 out of 10.

“The Strangers – Chapter 2” will be released in theaters on September 26, 2025.