As The Strangers: Chapter 3 reached its midpoint, tears pricked at my cheeks in that dimly lit theatre. Not from any considerable stir of emotion for our heroine Maya, or The Strangers themselves. They were wet because I had yawned a little too hard, and my eyes were dry from their usual screen fatigue. It’s genuinely a tragic occurrence when a film doesn’t manage to make you feel anything, and tonight tragedy has struck in an AMC Theatre. For myself, and for the audience of 8 that left in silence with me.

The Strangers: Chapter 3 Can Be a Standalone Film

For those who need a refresher, we pick up where The Strangers: Chapter 2 left off. The remaining two Strangers are still stalking Maya. The Sheriff is still creepy. The town is still in on it. Our protagonist walks or is kidnapped from scene to scene until the 1 hour and 30-some minute mark where she walks right out of the film.

A reader will have to twist my arm particularly hard to get me to see the point in setting the scene for this film. I often do this in my other reviews as a courtesy, but in a shocking turn of events, I don’t think you need to have even seen the first or second film to watch Chapter 3. What’s been concocted is a film made in a lab to be caught on TV when you’re too tired to change the channel and too indecisive to do anything else. The script and the cinematography for this film were poured out of a high-yield industrial barrel and chemically synthesized solely to replay on FX in a few months.

The Strangers Origin Story Continues and You Still Learn Nothing

None of this is to be catty for cattiness-sake, I just genuinely can’t figure out another reason to put together the pieces in this particular configuration. In a trilogy meant to reveal everything about its killers, there’s still little certainty as to what made them. The flashbacks imply they were just born wrong and built stupid, but then the set dressing implies that maybe religious upbringings made them evil. Or is it physical and mental abuse? Or maybe this is all just a long winded and very badly set up metaphor for how corrupt law enforcement makes monsters. Maybe it’s all four, maybe it’s none, and frankly, I’m unsure anyone can muster any interest to figure it out.

The film eeks out some lines about love and darkness and how serene being a serial killer is to our villains, but it’s all a cliché soup of edginess that emo bands of the 2000s mastered communicating twenty years ago. They imply ritualistic tendencies for them without actually setting up the time to understand why they do the ritual outside of reliving the same tired killings over and over. Which is rich coming from this movie since it opens with that same tired definition of a serial killer, teasing it might have anything to say about the concept, but ultimately just vaguely caveman grunting the phrase “sociopaths, pretty crazy right?”.

We don’t get to the heart of why they do anything, simply cutting at the surface with a dull blade rather than figuring out the “why” of what’s happening. As a matter of fact, why does anything happen here? And with the amount of times I asked why anything was happening in this film, I felt like a Jadakiss single by the time we reached the third act.

None of the Cast Gets to Shine in A Film This Dull

Madelaine Petsch seems to have reached the end of her rope with the listless and witless script she’s reading off, playing every reaction she has as either deadpan neutral or mildly scared. Richard Brake gets more screentime, and it’s lovely to see him as always, but even he can’t fix the material he’s given. Really, there’s not a single cast member who gets to shine because they’re all weighed down by the incredibly dull and meandering script.

While the lighting and color grading certainly improved, every other technical aspect of the film is being drowned in a shallow puddle. There’s not a lick of creative camerawork, and the sound mixing feels designed to blow an eardrum out as it hammers you with loud, truly obnoxious jump scares. The kills are executed terribly and practically censored by the jumbled-up editing on tap. And of course, the effects look atrociously amateurish for a film with a $7 million plus budget; you get plenty of greasy CGI blood and a particularly comedic PS2 era-looking eyeball, and that’s about it. The closest thing to enjoyment I could find was in the film’s absurd needle drops that must have put a dent in the budget the size of a small town. Substance is out today, and style is on its mandated 20-minute lunch break.

The Strangers: Chapter 3 Is Apathy Incarnate

If Chapter 2 lacked the heart it took to become a cult classic, The Strangers: Chapter 3 is hollowed out completely by its apathetic composition to be anything worth watching. The only dread inducing idea this movie conjures is an entirely real-life scenario that has nothing to do with the events of this film. It conjures the notion that some poor sap couple gets stuck seeing this film this Valentine’s Day because of the romance hinted at in the marketing.

Steer clear of the town of Venus and The Strangers: Chapter 3, intrepid couples.

I can’t remember the first time I saw Re-Animator. While this will probably piss someone off, my first real introduction to a variation of the source material was with Joshua Chaplinsky’s Kanye West – Reanimator. Maybe I had seen the film before that, but I wasn’t certain. I decided to go back and watch (or rewatch) the film to compare it to the satirical book. To my surprise, I loved it! I’m not sure why I didn’t remember watching the film, but I was so enthralled that I wanted to make my second tattoo a Re-Animator tattoo! Five tattoos later, and I still don’t have one.

What is Re-Animator About?

Daniel Cain (Bruce Abbott) is a medical student at Miskatonic University, along with his girlfriend Megan Halsey (Barbara Crampton)… Megan just happens to be the daughter of Dean Halsey (Robert Sampson). Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs), who recently transferred to Miskatonic, finds a posting with a room for rent at Daniel’s. Paying with a fat stack of cash, Herbert quickly moves into Daniel’s and gets down to business. The only problem is, Herbert’s business is reanimating the dead.

As someone who has been adamant about not liking horror comedies, Re-Animator really tickles me in a way most don’t. There’s a supremely dark tone to this film that is brightened by the overly campy performances, deadpan jokes, and brutally funny practical effects. Re-Animator is one of the rare films that could have been singularly played for laughs or fear, but exists in this middle ground where it’s the best of both worlds. While this film isn’t deep enough to glean new meanings or gain profound lessons, each rewatch never ceases to be less enjoyable than the last.

One of the Best Lovecraft Adaptations

Writers Dennis Paoli, William J. Norris, and Stuart Gordon took (racist) H.P. Lovecraft’s Herbert West–Reanimator and unknowingly made one of the best Lovecraft adaptations to date. There’s a peculiar phenomenon in horror where films attempt to be overly Lovecraftian, much like the genre’s tendency to label films as Lynchian. What people don’t get about Lovecraft is that not everything was all tentacles and otherworldly. Obviously, there’s a level of that that plays into what Lovecraft was. I would personally label Re-Animator, along with In the Mouth of Madness and Color out of Space, as the best three Lovecraft adaptations/Lovecraftian films to date.

There’s little to say about a film like Re-Animator that hasn’t been said already, but there is one specific point that needs to be echoed. Well, two. Firstly, Re-Animator was director Stuart Gordon’s directorial debut. His insistence on creating a viscerally nasty, sexy, funny debut film was important to set his name apart from others. Stuart Gordon came out swinging and, throughout his career, didn’t stop swinging.

The second point that needs to be echoed is just how amazing the film’s practical effects are. Whether it’s the played-for-laughs cat puppet or Dr. Carl Hill’s (David Gale) decapitated head, each practical moment is handled with dignity, care, and the utmost beauty. While a handful of shots may not hold up as much now as they did in the 80s, the practical effects that grace Re-Animator rival some of the rare practical effects that are used today.

Why Re-Animator Still Matters in Horror History

If you haven’t seen Re-Animator, what are you doing? It’s full of brilliant, campy performances that could be a masterclass in Horror Acting for Screen 101. Barbara Crampton is a gorgeous badass, Bruce Abbott is a hilariously hapless himbo, and Jeffrey Combs showed how he was cultivating his career to be exactly what he wanted it to be. A film like Re-Animator will live on in horror history for the rest of time. My only question is…how hasn’t there been a (yuck) remake yet?