To be perfectly honest, the general reception to the individual chapters of the Strangers trilogy released so far has been frigid. While it can’t be said that the original two movies in the franchise were huge winners with critics, The Strangers: Chapter 1 and The Strangers: Chapter 2 have earned brutal reactions from professionals. The proverbial jury is not yet in on The Strangers: Chapter 3, which is arriving in theaters this weekend – but if everyone is still left unsatisfied, star Madelaine Petsch has revealed plans for a cut that she hopes will address complaints.
I spoke with the actress last month during the virtual press day for the new horror film, and knowing that she is a big genre fan, I asked for her thoughts on the modern audience for scary movies – especially after the banner year that was 2025 (including hits like Sinners and Weapons). Petsch gave those folks a lot of credit in her response, and acknowledged a particular issue that people have been having with the Strangers trilogy to this point. She explained,
I think because it's such a sophisticated audience, they hold their films to a really high standard, which I do as well. And because we changed the format of the way we put these films out, there was a little bit of discourse online about this not being a fulfilling film movie one or movie two, and it's because we shot one long film and broke it up into individual films. So Act one is Chapter One, act two is Chapter Two, and act three is Chapter Three, so it's not satiating their hunger.
When a movie-goer sits down in a theater, there is an earned and understandable expectation for a beginning, middle and ending… but that’s not really something that director Renny Harlin’s The Strangers trilogy was built to provide via individual releases going back to summer 2024. The films were all shot simultaneously in late 2022, and while there was an effort to make each part distinctive via subgenre changes (the first being home invasion and the second being more of the slasher mold), they are distinctly parts of a whole.
With The Strangers: Chapter 3, Madelaine Petsch is hopeful that audiences will understand the big picture – but if they don’t, there is a more direct method of getting it across in the works: there is a supercut that has been constructed that sees the trilogy condensed into one big horror epic. She continued,
The hope is chapter three does satiate it, and we did just finish editing the full length feature that's three hours and 45 minutes to eventually put out in theaters. That is all of them together with an intermission in the middle. And that to me is going to... Core audiences will be like, 'Ah, I understand this is so cool.' Now, we get to spend the time with the actor and the character really earning that like place she gets to at the very end. Because that's really what we wanted to do.
In addition to bringing the full story together, Petsch believes that the expansive runtime of the supercut does a bit more justice to human nature, as she feels it’s much more natural and real to see a person transform across 225 minutes than 90 minutes. She concluded,
I think oftentimes you watch these films that are an hour-and-a-half and someone's a normal person in minute one, and by the end of the hour-and-a-half they're out here killing everybody. And it's hard to believe, but we're just so used to believing it as fans. We've bought into that, and I think we kind of changed up the formula a little bit. And so I think people will finally see that with this one.
For now, it’s unclear when we might get to see this special super cut of The Strangers trilogy – be it on the big screen as hoped or via the home video market. But while we wait for updates on that front, fans of the franchise can go check out The Strangers: Chapter 3 in theaters everywhere starting tomorrow, February 6.
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