"Witness how The Strangers became The Strangers."
Yes, that's the actual tagline.
Lionsgate has released the first trailer for The Strangers: Chapter 1, which was originally envisioned as a reboot of the slasher film series before being rejigged as a prequel/soft relaunch. The tagline certainly suggests that the story will focus on younger takes on the masked killers from the original movie, anyway, as we see a couple stalked and attacked by a group of home invaders when they stay the night at a secluded Airbnb.
This looks... well, pretty bad if we're being perfectly honest. We weren't expecting some kind of horror masterpiece by any means, but we're not sure how this could be any more generic. They even recycle the chilling final line from the first movie at the end of the trailer.
The cast is made up of relative unknowns, and while director Renny Harlin has a couple of decent credits to his name, his horror credentials (The Exorcist: The Beginning, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4) don't exactly inspire confidence.
Harlin shot the entire trilogy back-to-back.
"[It was] the challenge of a lifetime, but I also really embraced it," he said in a recent interview. "On a Monday morning, I could be shooting the second chapter, and Monday afternoon I could be shooting the first chapter, and Tuesday morning I could be shooting the third chapter. it was incredibly demanding for the actors, for the continuity in terms of the make-up and wardrobe, and for my director of photography, because we wanted to create a visual language that develops so that the movies get bigger, more epic, as we go [on]. It just kept all of our juices pumping all the time"
Check out the trailer for yourselves below along with a new poster, and let us know if you think the movie will be worth a watch in the comments section.
"Maya drives across the country with her longtime boyfriend, Ryan, as the pair begin a new life together in the Pacific Northwest. Along the way, their car breaks down in Venus, Oregon and they are forced to spend the night in an isolated Airbnb home. Through the night they are terrorized by three murderous masked strangers."
The movie stars Madelaine Petsch as Maya, Froy Gutierrez as Ryan, Rachel Shenton as Debbie, Gabriel Basso, Ema Horvath, Florian Clare as Chris Sampson, Rebecka Johnston as Lucy, Miles Yekinni as Marcus, Ben Cartwright as Rudy, Janis Ahern as Carol, Ryan Bown, Brooke Lena Johnson, Ella Bruccoleri, Stevee Davies and Brian Law.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 will be released on May 17, 2024, by Lionsgate Films. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 are both set to release sometime that same year.