The Strangers: Chapter 3 Movie Review: A nihilistic piece of violence porn that leaves you numb

The Strangers: Chapter 3 Movie Review:

“Okay, George. Your parents are dead. You have nothing to live for. And action…”

George Clooney says this to Graham Norton in an interview while discussing his Batman and Robin director Joel Schumacher’s style of working. Even young Bruce Wayne finds a sense of purpose in becoming Batman after his parents die at the hands of street criminals, but the characters in The Strangers: Chapter 3 continue to plunge themselves into a spiralling cycle of pain and apathy and do not evolve. Many of them seem to exist for nothing but the grim 'pleasures' of senseless slaughter.

While some argue that nihilism has no place in cinema, The Strangers: Chapter 3 serves as an example of how this philosophy can fail a narrative when it lacks substance. Many films work wonders even with a nihilistic climax, but The Strangers: Chapter 3 is not one of them. If such a film's plot hardly matters, the act of watching it becomes all about feeling it. Speaking of which, several films leave you with a profound sense of existential dread, making you consider meaning and purpose in your own life. Often, they serve as a cautionary tale, as with Spoorloos (The Vanishing), or subvert the ‘hero will save the day’ trope, as with No Country For Old Men. However, if the film itself is not hard-hitting or cannot make the audience feel what it tries to convey, it amounts to little except for a hollow technical exercise. The last genre where you want pure nihilism is perhaps the slasher genre, and The Strangers: Chapter 3 serves as a classic example as to why.

Neither a survival thriller in the conventional sense nor a fun slasher film, The Strangers: Chapter 3 is just characters killing each other for no rhyme or reason. Funnily enough, it begins with a piece of text offering a definition for the term ‘serial killer,’ as if we do not know what it means.

Director: Renny Harlin

Cast: Madelaine Petsch, Richard Brake, Gabriel Basso

The plot resumes from the ending of the second chapter, with Maya (Madelaine Petsch) trying to evade the marauding man and woman in masks. Unfortunately, Maya’s traumatic experience only makes it hard for her to trust any of the town’s inhabitants, including Sheriff Rotter (Richard Brake). Meanwhile, writer-director Renny Harlin cuts back to a time in the past, explaining the origins of one of the serial killers. While Harlin shifts back to the past to explain a killer's origins, he thankfully avoids using these flashbacks as a cheap ploy to earn our sympathy for the perpetrators. The first film completely shuns the flashback, whereas the second part flirts with it in a way that suggests an attempt to humanise the killers. Thankfully, avoiding the narrative element here means that the makers do not go down the conventional path. However, the absence of this narrative pitfall does not make for a compelling viewing experience either.

Unlike the great films mentioned above, The Strangers Chapter 3 makes you search for meaning and purpose in the movie itself and not in life. With the second film itself, the makers successfully establish the fact that these killers have a traumatic past that makes them who they are. Therefore, you do not need a few more random killings of strangers just to underscore the same point. Watching the film reminds you of an interview where Aamir Khan says that the presence of excessive violence or sex in a film is indicative of a lack of skill. Then again, Harlin himself has weaved a fiendishly frightening film in The Strangers: Chapter 1, where the tension is palpable, and has a decent track record elsewhere too (he is also known for Die Hard 2). It is not like Harlin lacks skill; it is just that he could not resist the temptation to ply violence porn, with the plot going nowhere.

Much like The Strangers: Chapter 2, the third instalment also trades the tension of the first film for gratuitous violence, and you do not want to be at the wrong end of the swords and axes as some of the characters find themselves to be, unlike yours truly with an obligation for The Strangers: Chapter 3 movie review. 

Besides the visuals and some narrative elements, which convey the isolation, apathy and tension of people in the small town, the lone redeemable quality of the film is the compelling performance by Richard Brake as Sheriff Rotter. Brake is terrific as a police officer harbouring a dark secret that helps explain the goings-on in the small town. His behaviour here makes the sheriff withholding information in the second part clear. That you watch the film in isolation and still connect the dots to the second part is purely down to Brake's brilliance. His quiet, brooding demeanour and towering screen presence are comparable to some of cinema’s haunting characters, but then again, you wish this performance had come in a better movie.

Unfortunately, Madelaine Petsch, who is compelling in the first film and to a lesser degree in the second one, is saddled with a role characterised by sheer confusion. In many places, you wonder what Petsch’s character is even up to. Is she a traditional victim with her moral compass still intact or turning into a brutal killer herself, with a sense of Stockholm syndrome and a fatal attraction to her perpetrator? You never know, because the writing is ineffective and the film fails to take you to her headspace. The same confusion applies to the leader of the killer pack. When he kills or watches someone close die from up close, does he not feel anything at all? All he does is stare at the camera. Further, what is his endgame? Does he develop Lima Syndrome at some point? The film never makes you curious enough to find out. All it cares about is utter chaos and carnage. 

At the end of The Strangers Chapter 3, one character says, “I cannot feel anything,” and another says something along the lines of, “I have no reason to live any longer.” Alas, there is some relief to be had about the franchise finally ending. At the same time, you also wonder why it took the characters so long (three films totalling around five hours) to feel the same sense of numbness as the audience does.