The Strangers: Chapter 2, the second instalment in the The Strangers remake trilogy from director Renny Harlin, gets its first trailer today from Lionsgate ahead of the film's early 2025 release.
Returning to star in The Strangers: Chapter 2 is Madelaine Petsch, who played Maya, the victim of a home invasion by three masked strangers in the first chapter, The Strangers: Chapter One which released in May of this year.
Written by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland, The Strangers: Chapter 2 seems set to follow Maya's ordeal with the return of Scarecrow, Dollface and Pinup Girl, although specific details are still under wraps.
In an interview with Variety, Petsch hinted that Maya's trauma is far from over:
Throughout every step of the next two films it’s just, ‘How is she going to get out of this terrorizing situation? And it’s not necessarily all only home invasion, but they continue to invade her life in any way possible. Even in ways you don’t think are possible, they’re doing something fucked up. We really bend the rules a lot, which is fun.
All three chapters in the new The Strangers trilogy (based on Bryan Bertino's 2008 original) were filmed at the same time, with Harlin also teasing that he might make a super cut of all three films that would run 4.5 hours.
In the aforementioned Variety piece, Harlin seemed to suggest that The Stranger: Chapter 2 would be releasing this year, and reasons for the push forward are unknown. Whatever the case, it sounds like Harlin is ready to get into the rest of the trilogy:
“We wanted to take the audience on a journey […] The movies get more epic as we go but without losing the sense of claustrophobia, dread and the tone, which is reality. As a filmmaker, your instinct when you’re doing an action movie is that bigger is better.
In this one, my job was to rein myself in and always make sure that it’s real. Many times, smaller was actually better. The most important thing is that the movies keep the sense of reality, but where we take the audience in the second and third movie is going to be very surprising.”
For more, check out our interview with Renny Harlin and Courtney Solomon about The Strangers trilogy.
