Reviews
[REVIEW] ‘The Strangers: Chapter One’ Buys Some Time For Its Trilogy, But If The Next Two Suck We Riot’
Boy meets girl. Boy and girl go to a remote cabin. Boy and girl are terrorized by three masked murderers. It’s a tale as old as time. But there was a time about 16 years ago when The Strangers hit audiences with this tried-and-true premise in a way that felt fresh and terrifying. It was bleak without being exhausting and frightening without being cheap (barring a few jump scares). The franchise’s newest entry, The Strangers: Chapter One, attempts to take us back to those days with a reboot, but its execution shows that the time has passed for dwelling on the original’s successes. Now is the time for the series to outgrow the expectations set by the franchise.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 Revisits the Formula That Wowed Audiences, But Needs to Outgrow Its Legacy
Directed by genre film veteran Renny Harlin (Deep Blue Sea), the film is exactly what you’d expect: a return to basics, with a new couple slowly being tortured by a trio of masked killers who play a nasty game of cat and mouse. This time, Madelaine Petsch and Froy Guiterrez lead the film as couple Maya and Ryan, who run into roughly the same problems James and Kristen had in the first film; bog standard relationship troubles, and the occasional axe through the front door. Performance-wise, it’s nice to see Petsch adopting the mannerisms of a tried-and-true scream queen on her first go-around with a horror film, and even if the following two films aren’t knockouts, I’m interested to see how she approaches the character again.
The above might seem like a massive spoiler if you haven’t been following the publicity around this film, so let me elaborate: Chapter One’s titling is a bit more literal to its planned trilogy. Harlin himself describes the three movies as really being one massive 4-and-a-half-hour-long movie that will have its last two parts released later in the year. This is only the beginning, which is usually said as a threat, but this time feels more complicated.
The choice to shoot the trilogy altogether explains a lot of the film’s pacing problems: the last third of the film reaches the steady speed of a molasses drip, with an ending that felt more like the closer to the pilot of a Strangers TV series. The atmosphere is a cold dark forest, but the story moves with the languid motions of a heatwave-struck summer camp when we’re not in the thick of being attacked by cowled killers.
We’re Hopeful for a More Imaginative Future
I have a bit more faith that Harlin plans on doing something very out there with his mega-film ambitions; after all, tripling the length of your film demands something that will keep your audience hooked across three screenings over multiple months, like giving Madelaine Petsch a grenade launcher or having the Man in the Mask turn the town of Venus, Oregon into a Twisted Metal arena with his Ford Ranger. But I’m left wondering if the ending Part One drops us off at will sour audiences on the concept.
In terms of what the film has to offer visually, Harlin and cinematographer José David Montero do interesting work. Chapter One’s aesthetics are at the center of a tug-of-war between the original Strangers film and its sequel Prey At Night, fighting to be both gritty and cleaner looking at the same time. The lighting and coloring are absolutely a step up from Prey at Night, but the mumbly darkness of the original only really makes itself known in shots and scenes that are direct homages. The scares land semi-regularly, but genuine fear is out of the office in favor of more thrilling chase sequences. There are a few moments that really get you, and others that I think will mainly work best in a packed theatre where audience reactions feed off each other.
Does The Strangers: Chapter 1 Live Up to the Hype?
Though Chapter One feels like a more fun Strangers film at points, it doesn’t keep the energy up, and ultimately feels betrayed by its legacy. I’m under the impression that Prey at Night’s bold decisions and less-than-shining success at the box office might have just scared Lionsgate into taking the safe route, at least as far as opening the trilogy goes. It’s easy to backslide into comfort. But The Strangers: Chapter 2 and 3 have a great opportunity to dive into the deep end and take its audience into the unknown. In a year packed with exciting new movie prospects and original IPs popping up all over the place, Strangers has to go big or go home. Let’s hope the next two can make the hard-and-fast change of pace to do so.
I was browsing the Arrow Video table at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival in 2024, spending way too much money. (Nearly $400!) One film really caught my eye. Its cover was unassuming but spoke loudly: two red-lit people in space suits on the top left, while a (what seemed to be) missile silo took up the rest of the cover. The cover was enough to sell me, and I threw it in my car. Little did I know that The Andromeda Strain was going to be one of the most fascinating films I have ever watched. And the book was just as spectacular.
What is The Andromeda Strain About?
Piedmont, New Mexico, is quickly thrust into chaos when a government satellite crashes into the town of 68 people. Doctors Jeremy Stone (Arthur Hill), Charles Dutton (David Wayne), Mark Hull (James Olson), and Ruth Leavitt (Kate Reid) are activated to investigate this local extinction event. But they don’t find themselves inside a normal science lab; the four doctors are sent to Wildfire, a deep underground military base (D.U.M.B.). This 5-level-deep base is our nation’s frontline defense against this cataclysmic incident, but should it escape, then all hell would break loose.
Adapting Michael Crichton’s Novel
Based on the Michael Crichton novel of the same name, The Andromeda Strain is a wonderfully contained film that’s as pulse-pounding as it is fascinating. As someone who isn’t very smart, a film (and book) like this one makes me feel educated. Sci-Fi films find themselves constantly tiptoeing a tightrope of understanding. Hell, science is in its name. Should a writer make the science aspects too dumb, either no one will believe it, or people will be bored. If a writer makes it too smart, you alienate audiences like me, whose eyes quickly gloss over.
Nelson Gidding’s script, which is fairly accurate to Crichton’s novel, does an incredible job of bringing Crichton’s fascinating novel to life. Gidding trims out some fat where needed, turning this story into an incredibly lean two-hour 10-minute self-contained epic. With stylistic assistance from director Robert Wise, Gidding keeps the near-epistolary feel of the novel. But it’s the pacing and stylization of the film that bring it to a new level.
Robert Wise’s Direction and the Film’s Unique Sci-Fi Style
Robert Wise and cinematographer Richard H. Kline bring forced monotony in the most engaging way. I love how the decontamination chapters are handled in the novel, though it could be worrying to question how that could be transcribed over to film. But it’s how the decontamination scenes are handled that adds substance to the style. These scenes are slow, tiring, and should bring the pacing to a complete stop. At this point, we’ve seen what this satellite did to the town, and we’re amped to get more context. These scenes seem to go on and on, and it’s the tedium that comes with them that humanizes the entire process. I’m sure these doctors want to get to the heart of why they’re here, and as viewers, we’re forced alongside them to sit and wait for each second to tick by through the cleaning process on EACH level.
Most of the characters are fodder for dialogue and plot advancements, but it’s the characters of Dr. Hall and Dr. Leavitt who are the most complex. Dr. Hall is trusted with the key that would detonate a nuclear bomb inside this D.U.M.B., due to what is described as the odd-man hypothesis. (This basically means, should the crap really hit the fan, a single man with no children would have the least amount of issues making a tough decision in a life-or-death scenario.) And Dr. Leavitt’s character is maddeningly deep. She suffers from a medical issue that goes undisclosed–this is due to her deep love for her work, and she would not be able to do what she does based on this issue.
The Underground Base and Production Design
But what really sells me on this film is how it all takes place in a gorgeously constructed underground military base. The set design is beyond immaculate and well-crafted. It truly feels like an authentic underground base. And it’s fascinating that I stumbled on this film at the same time I had been doing deep research into Valiant Thor, Raven Rock, and the Greada Treaty. Though that is neither here nor there.
Why The Andromeda Strain Is Essential Sci-Fi Viewing
The Andromeda Strain is a grounded, but still incredibly smart, Sci-Fact film that brings light to an oft-not-spoken-about aspect of the United States Government. It excels at telling a brilliant, life-changing story while making it palatable for all audiences. This is a film that should be shown over the course of three Fridays in a lazy teacher’s science class. Action, anxiety, and fear abound in The Andromeda Strain. It’s a film that should be on any film viewer’s watchlist.
There are countless subgenres within subgenres for horror, and one that feels underutilized is workplace horror. Unless you’re one of the lucky few, most people wake up at some point during the day, go to work, and then come home. It’s one of the few things in life that’s nearly unavoidable. While there are countless real-life examples of workplace violence, seeing exaggerated forms of it in film can still be fun. When I pitched covering The Belko Experiment for this month, I actually thought I was pitching Joe Lynch’s Mayhem. I soon found out how incorrect I had been, but figured I’d go along with it anyway.
Mike Milch (John Gallagher Jr.) and 79 of his coworkers are locked inside the towering building they come to work in every day in Bogotá, Colombia. They’re given simple instructions: murder two coworkers within the next half hour. When they fail that task, coworkers’ heads start blowing up left and right. When they’re given the next task, kill 30 people in two hours, they take it…a little more seriously.
The Belko Experiment’s Brutal Premise Sets Up High Stakes
Written by James Gunn and directed by Wolf Creek creator Greg McLean, The Belko Experiment is a painfully by-the-numbers film that offers little more than a handful of entertaining kills. Its futile attempts at commentary regarding work/life balance or just how bad “faceless” upper management is fall so flat it’s comical. Nothing like multi-millionaire James Gunn telling me how awful it is to have to work a real job for a living. Great work. And its one-dimensional characters do little more than create a slight sigh of relief when they’re dispatched without regard.
A singular attempt at cleverness is broached from the beginning when we see a colony of ants in an ant farm on someone’s desk. Oh, look at that, these workers are nothing more than mindless ants! But any attempt at following that slightly clever idea is quickly thrown away. At one point, Barry Norris (Tony Goldwyn), the big boss in the office, attempts to group up who should and shouldn’t be killed; who has the most value outside of work. Gunn had the perfect opportunity to make Barry a deep and more sinister antagonist. If Barry had grouped people into sets from most to least profitable for the company, we would have something. It would show that Barry is a forward-thinking villain who is trying to suck up to the people who get paid even MORE than him!
Missed Opportunities for a Smarter Corporate Villain
I’ll do you one better. After all of that, what if the bad guys that Barry recruited to help him cull his subordinates realized they were just pawns in the game of Big Business? So then they attempt to repent by killing Barry in the hopes that they can find a common means of escape from this hell? Why is there zero attempt at making an interesting story other than this shitty, watered-down Battle Royale with people we don’t give a shit about? Instead of anything interesting, we’re just given a group of baddies who try to get into the security office’s gun safe. The only reason we’re slightly scared of the “bad guys” is because they’re bad guys.
The only slightly interesting performances we get are from David Dastmalchian and Adria Arjona, even if it might be a fluke. As someone who is a fan of Greg McLean and the Wolf Creek series, something just felt disconnected about nearly every aspect of The Belko Experiment. I’ve brought it up before that sometimes it’s okay to have a film that doesn’t tell a great story as long as the kills can carry some of the weight. But to say this film has a story is laughable, and that carries over to how flat this film looks.
Skip The Belko Experiment and Watch Mayhem Instead
It’s weird how sour this film left me. When I was watching it, I found myself grimacing at some of the kills. And I didn’t vehemently dislike it as much as this review would suggest. But as I sat there and thought longer, I just couldn’t wrap my head around what anyone sees in this. Mayhem is an all-around better film that tackles this same subject but in a much better way. So if you ever decide to sit down and watch The Belko Experiment, maybe go watch Mayhem on Shudder instead.
