Brief Story Line
After killing one of the strangers in the second chapter, Maya (Madelaine Petsch - Maintenance Required etc) was trying to run away from them when he met with Gregory (Gabriel Basso - The Night Agent TV series, A House of Dynamite etc), the only man left in the house she stayed for short while before. However, Maya encountered the strangers again while trying to escape out of Venus town.
Meanwhile Maya's older sister Debbie (Rachel Shenton - Hollyoaks soap opera etc) with her husband Howard (George Young - Falling for Christmas etc) and their bodyguard Marcus (Miles Yekinni) finally arrived in Venus. They suspected Sheriff Rotter (Richard Brake - Perfect Skin, Altered etc) involvement on Maya's disappearance and tried to find out her location.
So what would happen to every one and how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Well this film to me was still pretty entertaining in term of the horror of surviving from psychotic killers. There was still similar kind of intensity from previous movies when the strangers appeared, and the killings were still as brutal and violent as before. However, my wife and I did feel the suspense was not too great. Just like in the second chapter, the story has deviated a lot from the original Strangers. In case you are not aware, the original movie was released in 2008 with its sequel 10 years later.
This film was the final installment of the new trilogy that started two years ago which were unrelated to the original movies. In here the focus was more on the origin of the strangers, which got to hand it to the writers Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland for their creativity, even if they were not exactly great. The director Renny Harlin who also directed Chapter 1 and 2 was still able to give effective terror using the occassional jump scare scenes. They were enhanced by the wonderful sound effect in the studio we saw this one.
Madelaine Petsch did her best in here while Gabriel Basso was rather disappointing and not so convincing in his role. The rest did not leave any great impression for us. Oh aside from those above, there were also appearances of Ema Horvath (What Lies Below etc) and Ella Brucolleri (Call the Midwife TV series etc) as Venus local Shelly Barnes and Jasmine respectively. The movie's duration was only 91 minutes which was enough to conclude the whole thing. There was no mid or post end credit scenes at all. Btw, I read that the whole movies were actually shot together back in 2022 which meant the budget was relatively small for 3 films and I think they already recovered from the first two. So this one should give them nice profit.
Understandably, this movie was trashed by critics and likely audience as well. Not sure how it would fare in term of box office performance but I think it would stil be a win for Lionsgate. Overall this was definitely not the best in the whole 5 Strangers movies. But as a slasher horror film, it was still pretty effective though certainly not as scary as the original and the second one. It did have a quite satisfying ending for me and my wife. So if you just want to have a little bit of fun while finding out the origin of the Strangers as created by these writers, then you are welcome to give it a try.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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