432: The Strangers: Chapter 3 (2026)

This week we're closing the book on The Strangers: Chapter 3 (2026). We question why this story needed three movies, unpack how over-explaining defangs the franchise's essence, and debate the decision quality of its leading lady. This episode contains spoilers, beginning at 25:42.

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Mentioned in the Episode

Watch the Movie

The Strangers: Chapter 3 (2026)

Mentioned in the Episode

Madelaine Petsch Talks The Strangers Chapter 3, Reshoots & More

Madelaine Petsch Explains Why The Strangers: Chapter 3 Sticks the Landing

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Music Credits

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

It really takes looking for a third to a whole new level. In episode 331, we unpacked the first chapter of a Rennie Harlan trilogy designed to reinterpret an iconic home invasion story. While all three chapters were filmed consecutively in 2022, the team went back for reshoots dedicated to reshaping the final chapter based on audience feedback. What started initially as a story about being chosen at random has now become a story about what happens when someone stops running and turns towards the people behind the masks. This week we're closing the book on The Strangers Chapter 3. Greetings and salutations, and welcome to Hackerslash. If you're joining us again, welcome back. If this is your first time listening, welcome to the party. We are a horror movie review podcast dedicated to telling you whether a movie is a hack, a total joke, a waste of time, or a slash.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Totally killer. Fun intended.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

We believe horror is for everyone, and as such, you're rating these movies with the perspective we've gained from our varying walks of life and the flavors of fear we fancy most. My name is Chris, I'm your friendly neighborhood slasher enthusiast. This week I'm joined by the Superfly Space Guy Mac.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Felt good, didn't it?

SPEAKER_00 1:20

And the classic horror connoisseur, Sean.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

I'm pretty good with my hands. You're tuning into The Strangers Chapter Three, and if you support the show, you can check out our B side at the end of this episode where we get into if horror villains had an HR department.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

I can't wait to see what direction that goes in, but for now, what were y'all expecting going into this?

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Um, honestly, I was expecting us to wrap things up story-wise. Definitely. Like we're at part three now. But I was also expecting to get more origin story just based on how chapter two ended.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

Yeah, I think that's fair. I can also say for the most part, I don't want to speak for absolutely everybody, but I know that almost nobody had high expectations coming out of chapter two and going into this one. I know a lot of people didn't like chapter two. Hell, a lot of people didn't even like chapter one, calling this really the trilogy that no one asked for, but I actually enjoyed chapter one, and I even had a decent time with chapter two, if y'all can remember, when we were talking about it, following Maya through her trials and tribulations. So I was going into this one hoping that it was gonna build off of that and maybe close this trilogy a little bit stronger.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

What a generous take, Sean. Listen, I was buckled in and ready for the ride when we got chapter one. And when you have this premise of remaking a movie, but then also trying to add an original story and angle on top of it, you have to know that you gotta get past what everyone is familiar with. I mentioned this back in episode 331. I also mentioned this when we got into The Strangers Chapter 2, because The Strangers Chapter 2 was a bit of a nothing movie. I mean, there's a long chase scene. It's like if a final girl chase lasted over an hour and a half, but it doesn't amount to a whole lot, specifically because it is the middle entry of a three-part story. I really enjoyed and had fun with the first one, which is a wild thing to say, I know. But part of that enjoyment was built on the hope and and the promise of potential. And by Strangers Chapter 2, Sean, when we were discussing this on that episode, I think I was pretty tapped out. I I realized this potential is not gonna be realized. And so you go into this and you think, okay, well, this is what it's all leading up to. Surely it's gotta be something. But the big fall for me from chapter one to chapter two told me everything I needed to know, which was that it was gonna be a whole lot of nothing.

SPEAKER_02 3:52

It's a tough one because I think you go into this one and you start to feel, you know, genuinely underwhelmed, frustrated, even confused at times. And I think really to your point, Chris, is just even describing your experience going from chapter one into chapter two, and now like where your head's at going into chapter three, and just the feelings that you get while watching these all go, right? And you think because this was filmed and released in three separate parts, it made it almost made this one feel like it was stretched thinner and thinner over each consecutive film, trying to be one big story that was just released in three parts, and you start to wonder like, why was it three movies?

SPEAKER_00 4:37

Why is such a great question? I am honestly so excited to hear Mac's perspective on on all of this because Mac, you weren't on any of the original Strangers episodes, but you did treat yourself to some context.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Yeah, so I watched for the first time actually everything all in a row from start to finish. Well, ex with the exception of the first one. I watched that previously and then watched Pray at Night, you know, chapter one and chapter two all back to back in a row.

SPEAKER_02 5:04

Oh, you just went hard.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

I did. This reminds me of kind of when we when I at least started with Friday the 13th, I did a similar thing, or just absolutely binge watched a bunch in a row. And you know, this movie, it makes me think of West Wing. I don't know if either of you have ever watched that TV show, but Jed Bartlett, the president in that show, has a signature phrase that he says, and it's what's next? And sometimes that's in good ways, and other times it's more in line with how he says it in the show. You know, I think chapter one and chapter two for me weren't bad in comparison to what a lot of people experienced because I was watching them all in a row really, really quickly. And so I think it was more tied together, and I was like, all right, I kind of see what you're doing here. I wasn't the biggest fan of the first installment or second installment, honestly. It's not really my genre, but I can see that we're gonna change it up. All right, where are we gonna take this? And the end of chapter two, goodness, it it put us at a place where we could kind of go one of many different directions here, but I think this film just moved in such a weird zigzaggy way that I just spent most of the time questioning what was gonna happen next. And it was it was less like the beats of a of a story tied together with this happens because that happened, and it's more like a here's what happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then that happened.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

So there's a certain appeal to a yes and organization when you can feel like you're building on to something and you're building some momentum and it's gonna get somewhere. I love that. My struggle with this movie is I couldn't be bothered to wonder what was coming next because I was so bored. How do you do that? I love slashers, I love The Strangers, and yet this movie, in its final chapter, in its conclusion, it managed to feel what is almost for me like Hellhouse LLC origins, in that the longer it went on, the less I gave a damn about what was happening. It's so disappointing to get into that because the biggest thing I felt was just boredom. It was also simultaneous frustration at the absolute waste of Madeline Patch's talent. It was honestly astounding to me that this movie, that the screenplay was considered enough for a standalone feature film, much less the third part of a three-chapter deal.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

This is screaming straight to Hulu. It's just it seems like a Hulu original series and not one of the high budget ones. Actually, you know what? It does, it does seem high budget, but I can't even think of like the other Stephen King-based Hulu series that people just gravitate towards. It just seems like one of those, hey, we made a thing and put it on Hulu, and people are like, oh, all right, cool. I'll stream it when I uh have a chance to do the laundry.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Listen, there's a lot of things that go straight to streaming and are pretty fun, but this just seemed needlessly long. This could have been an email. This whole meeting could have been an email. That is the sentiment that you get from this movie. And it's also wild because it feels like our main girl Maya becomes less interesting the more the movies go, and she's supposed to be turning into more of a badass. And it's not in detriment to the performance, but it's genuinely the direction and the way the character is written and the decisions that are made that I'm like, what are we doing here?

SPEAKER_02 8:33

Well, yeah, I mean, that's exactly my point in saying that you really get to the end of the the third chapter, and really you just kind of when you really reflect on all of it, you just kind of want them all to be one like two and a half two two and a half hour film, and then you would have been fine. If you just made the one film and put all of the events in those in all of the chapters into one film, it probably would have been good because the result now is in chapter three, it's a disappointment because the pacing is so slow and draggy with these extended moments where nothing really actually is happening, and the characters specifically Maya, to our points, right? They she makes stupid choices. That part I had fun with in chapter two, but at least in the last one, it was just generic slasher fun, whereas in this one it just plain doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

It really doesn't, and it also doesn't make sense, and this is a jet yet another disappointment. This movie and this series, this trilogy of movies, does not understand exactly how long it is or how much time it's passed. Because of course, the linear timeline that we're presented with is this is over the course of one to two days, right? This is just a really bad weekend. It's absolutely horrific. These films were all shot back to back to back. Of course, we get some reshoots in, but with the delays in production and the idea that these are supposed to actually be released pretty consecutively, there's so much time that has passed. And it's almost as if in between all of that, there's a loss for how much time has truly elapsed during the runtime of the movie. And I say this because there are dynamics between characters, relationships, dare I say, that are building between characters that make no fucking sense. Stockholm syndrome, come on.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Yeah, it's it's really strange because there's a lot, I think, in all three of these films that are actually really good. Like the look of the films are really good. Sometimes the pacing works out well in the first two films at least. But there's some stuff here that's just bad, and it's mostly the plot, the characters, and honestly, the casting is a little bit now. I realize kind of a disappointment. And that's probably because I've seen The Night Agent, and that ruins uh Gabriel Babaso for me, just like straight off the bat. Like anytime I see him, all I think of is his goofiness in that TV show. But yeah, I think you know, I was I was definitely disappointed by the decisions that they that they made. And I think it reminds me of that idea of like the customer is always right, but you know, sometimes we know that they're not, right? They think they want certain things and sometimes they're just wrong. If this movie is the result of listening to some viewers, maybe they were wrong. You know, if if the original kind of intention was more put together, because it seemed like in part one and part two, whether or not you enjoyed them, that there was a vision behind it. It seemed like we were we were heading in a certain direction. And chapter three here, I'm not sure, I'm not sure where that direction went. It seems like it disappeared, and that was the biggest disappointment for me.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Yeah, it's like why did we get here?

SPEAKER_00 11:47

The biggest question is oh, which viewers? Who did you talk to? Who did you consult with? Because in I was even watching some interviews with our leading lady, she was talking about how yeah, the reality is a lot of people watch Morning Two and you're not satiated, but it's also because it's not the conclusion of the story. Of course you're not satiated, that makes sense. But also, who the hell did y'all consult?

SPEAKER_01 12:13

But it does take the the teeth out of it. I think when you're watching The Strangers OG, when you're watching even Prey at Night, I guess, when you're watching those two films, they're very similar films in their idea. And when it comes to like the bite that they have, I think a lot of that comes from how simple of a story it is. And so anytime you're gonna make that more complex, there's a danger that it's gonna it's gonna hit less. It's not going to, it's not gonna slap, as the kids say. I think we fell victim to that here. It's interesting how not scary the antagonists finally are. And if you've only seen the original film and then you try to, you know, watch that in the dark and then try to go to sleep right afterwards, you might be you might be checking some locks, you know, you might be looking out the window a little bit. And I don't think you're gonna have that same sort of effect here.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

No, not at all, for sure. I mean, for a franchise that used to thrive on literally quiet dread, this this one mostly lands with just this shoulder shrug. It the tension and fear never click, the the scenes are set up like they should be scary, but the payoff rarely ever even comes, and it's predictable, and you're just not invested even in the characters enough to feel anything for them. So you don't have the same sensation that you had watching the original from 2008 or some even some of the earlier things that we got in earlier installments, it's just not here.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

This is another classic case of you overexplained it, you did too much, less is more, and this movie simultaneously did everything and nothing at the same time, which is honestly incredibly disappointing. For as brutal and violent as aspects of this movie can be, it is somehow so much less than anything we saw before. I know I talked a lot of shit about the warthog scene, but give me the warthog again. I would take that, and again, we're talking about this on the heels of Cannibal Holocaust, but I would take that movie, that scene again and again and again over some of the nonsense that we get in this movie, and by nonsense I mean a whole lot of nothing. It is insane to me to look at this film and also see what feels to be like the squandering of potential when we think about the idea of playing with the term strangers and thinking about how complicit people can be. This movie in this franchise really had an opportunity to do something different while honoring the spirit of the original, and this just doesn't feel like that. Now I can at least give it credit for doing something different, even if it does bastardize such a great original movie. It even prayed at night. Great.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

It's weird because there's a moment with I think an antagonist that reminds me of other antagonists, but not done well enough. It's kind of a feeling of they sat down and thought, hey, you know, Buffalo Bill's gotta do mundane stuff, gotta do some bills, gotta pay taxes. What if we applied that treatment to like Leatherface? Like Leatherface is like sitting down doing mundane tasks, and then took that and distilled it into the antagonist that we get here. And this film, I mean, we're we're gonna talk about the ending in just a minute, but this film could have been absolutely out there. They could have done some really crazy stuff with all sorts of different characters, right? It could have gone in in many different directions, but it just feels like the mech version of other baddies here. It it I mean, this is a simple thing. You got people in masks and they stab you, and then you go bye-bye, and that's the movie. They break in and and you get stabbed. And to take that idea, go deeper with it, and then not really kind of nail it in any regard, it's it would be insulting to say it's ripping anybody off. You know, I I guess they rift here is really what we did. We rift on the original idea of the strangers, but we we didn't really pay homage to very much, at least in an effective way.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

Yeah, this movie and really this franchise feels less and less original the further it gets along. This one is derivative for sure. It's familiar, it feels overly safe, especially for a finale where it definitely should feel like it's swung harder. The the fucking film repeats the franchise's own moves, making it feel more like a greatest hits album, only it's really a greatest hits full of bad covers where the artists just don't get it right. You know what I mean? Like, have you ever seen those albums where they're like, this is just a collab of a bunch of artists paying tribute to one other artist and they're just doing covers and it's like, now this just isn't it, you know? That doesn't even sound right, and that's kind of what we're getting here.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

You know what else doesn't sound right is this damn ending of this movie. Again, talk about the most anticlimactic conclusion that you get. Now, it does go in interesting direction. I say interesting very generously. That's a very liberal use of the word interesting, but it is largely Madeline's input that got this scene to where it was, and I can appreciate the whys behind it. But as we close the book on this trilogy, man, it really just went out with a big womp woman Yeah, it felt too safe.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

I remember walking away from this movie and just thinking, if this is where we were going this entire time, why the fuck did we need three fucking movies to get here? I just think that this movie might have been trying to land with this brutal simplicity that has worked in the past, but it didn't land at all in this ending.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Absolutely brutal. I mean, it was be bewildering. It was so strange. I was gesturing at the screen, like shoulder shrug for sure, Sean. I mean, I had every meme, like I was acting it out in person, just asking why what did what did you do? Like, what were you thinking? Because again, we started this film with so much potential to kind of do something interesting. And by the time you get to this ending, you're like, why would you pick that? Like, why would you think to do that at all? Especially because there actually was some really good ingredients working on here, you know. We we had some some fresh poultry or meat, we had some fresh vegetables, and somehow you try to make a peanut butter and jelly. Like, that's not that's not how this works at all here.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Well, clearly this movie is a bit of a mess, and I can see where this is going. But before we actually rate it, Sean, how would you describe the gore score?

SPEAKER_02 18:51

You know, I think a lot of people will go into this one assuming that'll go harder as the finale, be more brutal or more shocking, but instead the violence in the gore feels muted and restrained. The film often doesn't show you the brutality of the kills head on, which is a shame. And there are some moments, and even in some of those moments, we ended up getting some some shitty CGI earning this one a pretty solid, just low gore score, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

And what about the animal report?

SPEAKER_01 19:25

Thank goodness it's all good in the hood here. We left all that hogwash behind from the previous film.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Let's go ahead and get into our readings then. The Strangers Chapter 3 from 2026 at long last, it's over. Was it a hacker or slash?

SPEAKER_01 19:38

I'm gonna go first here because I'm the newest to the franchise. You know, I was not a fan while I was watching The Strangers or The Strangers Pray at Night. I just found them to kind of be pointless scream and torture marathons, and that's just not really what I'm into. But with this new trilogy, there was hope. A final girl, a continued storyline, perhaps even the semblance of a point. Chapter two, I think, ended still with some potential, the potential to wrap up nicely, or to go down a road explored by films like Rob Zombie's Halloween. The original Strangers works because there is no context, there's no reasoning, there's just masks, knives, hacking, slashing, and screening. I didn't necessarily enjoy that, but I understood what it was attempting to do and respected it for that. This latest trilogy pivoted so hard into flashbacks and attempts at depth that it had me literally angrily gesturing at the screen in an empty theater. Chapter three gave us faceless, nameless terror, unmasked into mediocrity, matched only by a protagonist whose character arc looked more like a spiral than a drain, and not in a fun way. Honestly, it just feels like a letdown after having so much potential, but ending so unenthusiastically. It is a hack.

SPEAKER_02 20:52

Well, I gotta give it up to this film because the Strangers Chapter 3 somehow managed the rare feat of being both the final chapter and the final straw. After the two movies that preceded this one, the supposed payoff we were hoping for doesn't land with a knife to the gut, but rather just a gentle tap on the shoulder to really just see if you're still awake. Because instead of suffocating dread that made the 2008 film so effective, this film leans far into over-explaining, predictable beats, and really just like pacing that's so sluggish that it makes the mass killers feel like they're working a double shift. And the whole three films shot as one story loses its ambition and ends up feeling like it was just stretched way too thin by the time we get to this chapter three. So, of all three of the chapters, this one is easily the weakest, and in the end, The Strangers doesn't really invade your home. The film just politely loiters outside, knocks once, and leaves before anything interesting afterwards. Actually happens. So for a franchise that's built on ruthless intrusion, this movie deserved a sharper blade, but this finale turns out to be just a total hack and not the kind that scares you. It's just the kind that makes you wonder why you even answered the door in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

You know, if I could change the title of our podcast specifically for this movie, it would be a whack or slash. This movie was fucking whack. You go into this movie and its reputation, its masks are built on the goodwill and the lore and the appeal of an original series. Really, an original film from 2008, and then in ten years later, we got a great underrated sequel in The Strangers Pray at Night. This movie bit off more than it could chew. And when you think about movies that are filmed close together or are supposed to be released in close succession, think about Fear Street. Think about that trilogy and how it weaves stories together and how it had to jump across centuries to be able to tell a story that was worthwhile. You mentioned it, Sean. It taps you on the shoulder to ask if you're still awake. This is a perfectly quiet movie, somehow in some moments quieter than in a violent nature. And is such a good movie to doze off to on a Saturday afternoon, if that's what you're looking for. I can I can give it that compliment. This movie is utterly disappointing. And the little bit of hope I had that it would amount to something, it just squandered it and got in its own way. We couldn't get The Exorcist Deceiver after getting The Exorcist Believer, and yet we got three of these movies. This is a hack. Spare yourself. And with that, the Strangers Chapter 3 from 2026 has earned a universal hack. I'm not going to encourage you to watch this movie, but what I am going to do is encourage you to stick around for the spoiler zone where we can really dig into it together. We'll see you in a bit.

SPEAKER_02 24:09

This is a public service announcement brought to you by your friends at Hackerslash and your own poor decision making. If you are currently at home, please remain calm. If you are alone at home, you are already failing this test. This message is to remind you of some basic stranger safety guidelines to help keep you alive. If someone knocks on your door late at night asking for someone who doesn't live there, that is not a misunderstanding. And they're probably not looking for Tamara. That is just Act 1. Do not open the door to be polite. Politeness is how the franchise continues. If you hear a noise behind you, do not investigate. They are counting on your curiosity and your bad peripheral vision if the power goes out. Please understand, this is not weather related. It is personal. For your safety, always remember, lock your doors, close your blinds, and never whisper plans out loud. They're already in the room. If you see someone wearing a mask with no expression, do not scream. They find that encouraging. And finally, if you believe you are being targeted at random, please remember it's because you were home. This has been a public service announcement. There is no hotline, help is not coming. Good luck.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

Welcome back, folks. You're now entering the spoiler zone for the Strangers Chapter 3 from 2026, which has unsurprisingly earned a universal hack. Now we have so much to get into here, but before we get down to the specifics of our ratings, Sean, let's go through that sleigh by sleigh.

SPEAKER_02 25:59

Yeah, let's get into it because even though the kills in terms of visual gore were a little lackluster, there's still some worth talking about out of the 12 total kills that we got. And so I, you know, listen, I do wish we got a little more of the action with some of these kills for sure. But there was there were some pretty impactful kills. There were some fun ones that we can talk about, even though we may have not gotten to see all of the action or all of the blood and guts. But I gotta know which one of these kills had you knocking on the door?

SPEAKER_01 26:30

There was there was some good ones in here, and I think for a moment kind of felt like Star Wars again, you know, let the past die, kill it if you have to, especially when we got to Dollface here. I think it was kind of going out with a whimper, but it was also really satisfying to see Maya do it, right? I mean, we're in that moment, we're just like, do something, dude. Like there's weapons nearby, they're putting a weapon in your hand, like make a move, go out with a bang. And when she just like sat there doing nothing, it was so dissatisfying. But the turnaround, the realization that oh, I can do something, and to take out to take out little dollface there was great.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

What a great moment. I actually was so disappointed that it went the direction that it did, where she's just like brutally killing Dollface, and then all of a sudden Scarecrow is just like, yeah, okay, I'm into it. I needed a little bit more danger than that. This movie is a struggle for me because it felt like there were zero stakes. Maya couldn't drive, she couldn't, she honestly couldn't just stay away, she couldn't quit Scarecrow, and that's the problem. So many opportunities that she could have just walked away. And there was a lot of moments where he was just letting her. All of those horrific deaths in this movie. But in keeping with a motel kill and in keeping with Dollface, I want to go for the cheating boyfriend, the fucking pedophile. Sir, she was at 14 at best. She obviously looked like a child. You're gross and disgusting.

SPEAKER_02 28:07

For sure. What brutality, too. That was, you know, when we think of you know, we're getting this origin story type thing, you know, whatever they're doing with this story, right? They're telling you a little bit of background with these strangers, right? And I think it was very interesting to kind of get the backstory for Dollface and like how this third member became part of the crew, right? And and just what like breaking in to the motel room only to find that Dollface had already done the job and hacked her boyfriend up like pretty gnarly was kind of cool. Yeah, it was kind of cool.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

It really takes looking for a third to a whole new level, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 28:51

I mean they they just stumbled upon their third, they were just like, hmm, I mean that and that's the same shit that we're talking about with Scarecrow and and Maya killing doll faces, you know. He's just like, You're into killing too. All right, you want to be friends, you know, you want to hold hands.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

Some might say they found the unicorn, something like that.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

Very interesting. I don't know. What's really bothersome is just the entire complacency of this entire town, all the way down to deputy dipshit Tommy Walters, because how the fuck does shit like this go down for however many years this has actually been happening? You know, you gotta imagine, you know, kids to whatever age they are in their 20s, late 20s, something like that, maybe even early 30s. That's a long time for this town to just be like killing random travelers. And this deputy, I mean, he had it coming, but it was a little bit jarring in that moment. You know, you you were thinking they're having a conversation. I mean, it's predictable, but you know, that that whatever it was, that bone drill or whatever the hell went into that dude's head, that was pretty sick. I would have loved to see a little bit more, a little bit more guts, like give me some brain splatter coming out of there, give me something, give me a little bit more out of that, but it was good.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

Yeah, that whole scene honestly had the spirit of reanimator going through it, but I think it's just because it's a morgue.

SPEAKER_02 30:16

Yeah, the morgue. It was the morgue vibes.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

A lot of fucking audacity on this man, though, to well, I love that he grows a consciousness, like, hey, I'm calling the state police in because obviously this is fucked. But do you really think that's the best thing to say right now? And it's such a compromising, you should have just called the state police.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

And you know, you already have like some idea what the fuck is happening here. So what do you think is gonna happen when you bring up you're gonna bring other police in here?

SPEAKER_00 30:41

Yeah, call the supervisor, bring them in, and just let it be. You don't announce to the person that you're about to report them, you just fucking report them.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

What a choice that was, because I think we all knew in that moment, like you're not making it out of that room. You know, I mean, come on, dude. He's been covering up for his kid and his friends for what, like 30 years at this point. Give everything. You have been with him for probably 10 to 15 years, and you've been helping him do stuff, and you're like, yo, I gotta, I gotta report this, boss. You know, if the second you let him know that he's like, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Absolutely. Go ahead and get your cell phone. Yeah, you're dead. Okay. I mean, just brilliant. But I it was really cool how sudden it was. I think there were some good moments in this in this movie that, like, not necessarily about the jump scare, but just about like the suddenness of it and how quick it was, like, boom, right in the head. We didn't have to waste any time getting guns, fumbling, doing anything like that. It was a bop, you're done.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

Yeah, I think what might have made it a little bit effective was just the fact that you know you're you're expecting him to say this, and you're like, oh yeah, this is fucked. He's an idiot, he's gonna die. And then there's that reaction from Sheriff Rodder where he's like, it's never been our one of our own, and then boom, then he turns still, but it's still that acknowledgement of like, oh, maybe he is gonna side with him and go against his son or whatever, but no, boom, we're going after it, we're gonna kill you. Fuck you, man.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Yeah, man. It's honestly a little disappointing. Uh maybe disappointing isn't the right word, but I expected there to be some kind of punishment for the waitress that spoke up at the diner. I thought for sure we would see her body strung up somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

Yeah, it was kind of surprising that like nothing happened to her that we that we know of. You know, I mean, it seems like other people here, but even townies get taken out now and then, and especially at this point, they're just like in a rampage. So it would have been perhaps like satisfying to the story to see something go down a little bit. I mean, the sheriff was getting his kills in. You know, if you're gonna include him in the in in the antagonist and make him responsible for a portion of the kill count, like let him let him do it, do it up.

SPEAKER_02 32:52

Yeah, he was definitely not uh he was just not a trustworthy dude for sure. Who ne who knows what happened to her? She might have gone down, maybe they stick to their rules, and you know, she didn't really say too much. You know, she just was one person that said a little bit of something, maybe led someone in the right direction, and ultimately all those fuckers died too. So who knows? But I know some of these kills are gonna come up probably as we talk about scenes because they kind of tie into scenes, but man, some of these kills like Maya's sister who gets killed right in front of her, right? I mean, we're gonna probably talk about that scene as a whole, but the scene of her like her death just seemed so I don't know, so quick and so unimportant almost, like it just didn't land the way I feel like it should have.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

Yeah, that scene is supposed to represent the last of Maya's humanity exiting her body. Yeah, and yet I mean, well, to be fair, Benalinton does a great job of just like frozen in emotion with tears running down her face, and she is bound up in a car, so what action can you truly expect? But it is just disconnection from that point forward. And for the wound that she got when she was killed, I mean, I feel like we've seen people survive worse. Yeah, we've seen people survive way fucking worse. I was honestly expecting her to cough herself back to life in the middle of the pickup truck and say, Hey bitch.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Yeah, we've seen people survive worse in this franchise, actually. And so that was very surprising. There was a lot of kills here that were just unenthusiastic and like didn't meet, I think, the level that they had been set up to. Like Marcus, for instance, was such a such a meh kill as well. Because, first of all, who is this dude that's riding with her her sister and and brother-in-law? Is this their friend? Is this a hired private eye? Private security. Yeah, he just seems like, all right, he's he's got a mission and stuff, and he opens a door to a machine that chops up bodies. Obviously, there's like blood all over it and eyeballs and stuff, and then he continues to stand directly in front of it to where anyone could have just run up on him and pushed him into it, and it would have been goofy and worked in the 80s really well, but continues to stand there and just looking around and then completely loses his situational awareness when he steps into the building and gets got. Come on, he didn't even get to fire an entire shot. Well, not one.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Let's be clear, Mac. This man lost his situational awareness when they pulled up on the RV camper and then said, Hey, go in there while I scope out the area. Motherfucker, what? You're in a vehicle, you have headlights. I know that you lost the sheriff at this point, but there is absolutely no reason that you needed to have these two people get out of the safety of your vehicle to get into the unknown space of a camper. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

Such a safe area just hanging there. Yeah, terrible choices for sure. But even Mac, you're describing like as he's going through the you know, the wood chopper house or whatever, the lumber house, and you see the eyeball in that machine. The eyeball looked fucking terrible. It looked so shitty. Even with with the amount of like gore that we get in this movie, you think the little bits that we would get would be like high quality, but no, this thing just looked like they digitally placed a fucking eyeball in there. It was so bad.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

Yeah, I want to really underscore the part where you talked about you'd expect it to be high quality. And I want to pivot to what I thought was the worst aspect of this film's production, and again, there's a lot that this movie does really well. As a whole, it's not a good movie, but aesthetically, this movie looks fucking great. The cinematography is excellent. There's a little bit too much of the rack focus in a couple moments earlier in the film with our opening scene. But when you look at where this movie concludes, and it's the cellar, it is the room that Scarecrow Gregory has, it is if you if you wanted to have ChatGPT in all its infinite wisdom describe what a Timu serial killers layer would look like, with generic words carved into a wall, with collections of white candles burning and old photos. It was just so unconvincing, so unearned, and just generally uncompelling.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

It did look a little bit strange. We're like, Where am I walking into? It kind of you know, I don't want to talk smack too much, it immediately just reminded me of you know the Halloween with Paul Rudd with the stupid layer that Michael had. Like it just it seemed very strange.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

Yeah, it also seemed like the weird fucking Halloween, Halloween five, that I know I said I love like my son. I don't love this like my son, but it's the moment where Jamie goes up to the attic, finds all the dead bodies, and there's candles lit everywhere and a portrait of her next to this kid coffin. There's a lot happening in this movie, but specifically the carvings on the wall. Come the fuck on, guys. Come on. This is just uninspired.

SPEAKER_02 38:33

Yeah. Yeah. But listen, I think you said there's there's a lot that this movie did really well, and I think I really did enjoy even just the setting that I think really helped to set the visual mood of this film. The film I think makes really solid use of these isolated rural locations with those empty roads, those rundown structures, and the the wide negative space that they use. I think it's it's really all the stuff that The Strangers has, you know, leaned on even in the past, but the environments still look like places where something terrible could happen. And I think the the use of just that rural, isolated location in the woods of Oregon or whatever just seems really cool and it kind of added to the film.

SPEAKER_00 39:23

I will tell you, I've been itching and just fighting the urge to pack everything I I have and move to Oregon specifically. This movie makes me want to do it. This movie is gorgeous.

SPEAKER_01 39:35

Looks like somebody's gonna start watching uh Virgin River perhaps sometime soon. Get that Pacific Northwest vibe. It is an amazing like setting, though, and I think they made use of the darkness in the woods pretty well in several points. A moment did feel stolen from the latest Halloween franchise, though, and that's when we've got the police cruiser about to get stolen. The sheriff steps out to go get the first aid kit to just humor her, and we get like the smoke kind of playing off the car coming from the tailpipe. And I was like, I feel like I feel like that was in one of those Halloween movies lately before you know one of the sheriff's head got like turned into a pumpkin or something. I don't know, but it I don't know, it seemed it seemed familiar, but it did work really well visually, and it also worked really well when Maya hopped out of the car and was like hiding behind a tree, actually hiding from the sheriff before he caught her. And again, we're kind of like in that moment, like the mistiness of of the woods hanging out in the dark, but we can still see her well lit. I don't love it when we've got too much darkness and you can't make out any detail. And they had some great, great scenes here where they were able to like be in the full darkness of the woods, but have our characters in focus. You know, if you're gonna if you're gonna romp through the woods, like that's gonna get boring real quick, so you gotta make it interesting by actually kind of hiding them a little bit, and they were able to do that effectively here. And so, yeah, making use of the setting, not just being in the country, but being near trees and plants and stuff like that, I think they they kind of nailed it, especially with all the shadow work. But when it comes to my favorite scene, it's not in the woods because it's the campiest scene, I think.

SPEAKER_00 41:14

I swear to God, if this is the church.

SPEAKER_01 41:17

No, okay, the church was least favorite least favorite scene. That was actually part of like the showing too much, you know, going trying to go too far in terms of context and character origin and whatever. Like, don't take the mask off the dude when we know he's the killer now, leave the mask on the rest of the movie, just saying No, I actually found a really tiny scene kind of enjoyable because it was Campy, and that was when the two of them are leaving the motel, having just dispatched one of the previous killers, and now two Randos, and we've got crazy on you as they're driving away from the motel, and she's like in the truck, being super uncomfortable because Maya doesn't know which way is up now. And that combination of music and intensity from the characters as they're in that beautiful Ford pickup, just barreling down the highway, was perfect. It was flawless, and I don't I don't know why it just hit so well for me, but it but it really did. Because when they tried to do something like that at the end of the movie, it did not work.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

No, yeah, I guess that was bad.

SPEAKER_01 42:20

But back then we could get away with it.

SPEAKER_00 42:21

I'm actually thinking about the the moment in this movie that I really enjoyed the most, and it was the opening scene of the movie. First off, I really enjoyed opening up to the film with the sound of silence. I really, really enjoyed that. But to get the opening scene and to know that this was years before anything that's taking place in the current timeline, but we have a young woman pulling up to the hotel and you have this interaction with Shelly, who ends up being a pinup girl. You have this interaction that is both friendly and inviting, but also deeply creepy. And it really does give a little bit of the Norman Bates energy, which I really, really appreciate. I wish that we had gotten more. I almost wish that we had gotten some reveal that she was still alive somehow and just was kept as some kind of like victim. When you look at this at the end of the scene and what it offers, it doesn't really do much besides the fact that it happened to be the number 24 room. Her death added nothing to the movie besides patting the body count. But for the entirety of the scene going up to that, before you realize that it doesn't really offer much to the story, I really fucking enjoyed it. I don't care if it was a reg regurgitation, I I really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_02 43:46

Well, it's also good, and there's there's another thing that I liked from that scene as well, and it's really just there's just the moment where Claire is in the room, you know, in that infamous room 24, and we get that quiet. Intrusion, you know, that we're used to with the strangers, and there's this moment where one of the strangers suddenly appears outside of the window, and you just you get the glimpse of what worked from the original The Strangers, and that starting off that way and getting that vibe kind of gets your hopes up because you're you're like going into that scene and you're like, Oh man, okay, we're we're starting off pretty good here. I wonder where they're gonna go with this. It's a shame that it didn't kind of carry on that way, but it was a really strong scene. The rest of the film, I just think there were little moments that I think were really interesting or really cool shots, like when Scarecrow is putting the pinup girl mask on Maya, and you get that really strange shot that's just a brief moment, and you see his eye through her mask, which was just a very cool moment, and it was just a quick second, though, but it was an interesting choice, and I loved that we did that. And then there's also the scene where Maya is getting picked up by Sheriff Rodder in the car, and there's that exchange of conversation that just doesn't feel good, like it just feels wrong. She probably knows that something is not right here, and the responses and that really that shit eating grin that Sheriff Rodder has the entire time. It's just terrible. It's just terrible. But it was good tension building for sure.

SPEAKER_00 45:26

You know what else was terrible? The fact that this girl stole that car and her way out of town was gone in 60 seconds because holy shit, she couldn't make it a quarter mile down the road before taking her eye off the prize and crashing her vehicle. Absolutely absurd. How does Maya's driving get worse progressively?

SPEAKER_02 45:48

It's an interesting development for sure. How does Maya's character for me just also just piss me off more and more the more the franchise goes on? Her character pissed me off so much this time around. I I can have fun with making poor decisions in a slasher film, but in this movie, she fought and fought and fought, and then just it just didn't feel like her switch of loss of humanity to flip the way that it didn't feel right. It just felt like okay, we just gave up and she could just watch her sister die right in front of her, no nothing, nothing happening. I see she gives the emotions, but your your your fight is just all of a sudden done, it's just over. He guided your hand to put a machete through somebody in the motel room, and that that started to feel good, did it? Like I don't know. I don't know what's happening here, you know?

SPEAKER_00 46:43

Yeah, you know, for me, where where she lost me and she lost my support was going into the church and touching the piano. What the fuck? What in what world is that even a reasonable course of action to take?

SPEAKER_01 46:59

I don't know. I think it was right after that for me. Like she we have that whole ridiculous scene. She has, you know, she has some decent whiskey. Okay, great. Makes a run for it, good. Everything afterwards, what are you doing? Like you you had us in the right direction, which was getting away. And now she just like wants to get close to like the very end where she's like caressing him and letting him what is he doing, like sniff her and stuff. Sniffing her.

SPEAKER_02 47:27

Yeah, definitely sniffing her.

SPEAKER_01 47:28

Yeah, who who are you at this point? I mean, because it wasn't even an obvious, like uh, this is what I have to do to like get him close enough to where I can stab him and make it fatal. Okay. Didn't really feel like that. It felt more like a I'm in the moment right now.

SPEAKER_00 47:43

Yeah, so this is a decision that I actually really enjoyed from Madeline Pet, who plays Maya, and she shared that going into it and just thinking about horror movies in general, and I'll I'll see if I can find the link to the interview where she discusses this. She was like, hey, this guy's a big dude, and I am not a big dude. So I've always thought if I need to survive a situation, I'm gonna use my feminine wiles to make them think that I'm in love with them, and then I'm gonna do what I gotta do just to get close. And she's like, I'm gonna do Stockholm Syndrome, I'm gonna make them think that I'm on their side, I'm gonna make them, I'm gonna make them think that I'm I'm allied with them. Sure. And I appreciated that dynamic. Now, where the film ends up, it's ambiguous, and I don't love it being ambiguous. I wish it was more definitive in one way or another.

SPEAKER_02 48:32

Yeah. Here's what I think in Who Am I to Say Anything? But for me, if we were gonna have I just don't know the direction for Maya to to potentially or ambiguously, we don't even know, just lose all emotion, turn into this, you know, cold, emotionless killer herself. Maybe it just didn't feel right. But I feel like if the decision was a little bit different, if Maya decided at some point, you know, mid-movie to put the mask on herself, right? Not have the mask put on her, but she decided to pick up the mask and start playing games with Scarecrow to kind of get him in the in the vibe that she's with him now. That could have been cool, right? Maybe she had to kill a couple people with him to to get the buy-in. By the end, she kills him. I can be for that. I think that would have been for me a little bit more fun. But again, who am I?

SPEAKER_01 49:33

It was like still possible that she's letting him do these things and going through the motions, but when we get to her sister, her sister, it's it we give up at that point because it's like you didn't even scream. You I I guess you're holding it in because the tears are coming out, but like it seems like she had the means to try to break out or at least look around for a way to try to break out as he's headed towards that trailer. Does she know it's her sister in there, though? Doesn't seem like it unless she heard it like on the cell phone, but I don't think she did. But when he brings her out, it should have been like a a nah, it's game on kind of a moment. And instead it was like a okay, I'll just keep going with this ruse.

SPEAKER_00 50:14

Yeah, I guess. You know, listen, sisters before Misters, and you emoted more to a lot of other people dying. You're more upset about the warthog than you were about your sister, bruh.

SPEAKER_02 50:23

Yeah, it just didn't, it didn't feel right. It felt like we lost the emotion too suddenly. Like we where did the fight go? It just is just randomly gone. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 50:34

And that's and that's what I'm talking about. That's where this movie trips on itself and it thinks it's going on longer than it actually does, because I could see a long period of torture and suffering. A la Poughkeepsie tape. I could see that level of separation and dissociation. But this is like a few hours. This is a Saturday through Monday to situation. Like this is not a a lengthy enough time, I think, to make the sudden leaps in her character that we do. But the other thing that frustrates me about this movie is the treatment as if and the mask reveal, as if we're not supposed to have already known who Scarecrow was. As if you're supposed to look back on that church interaction where he says, now we're even, and it's not supposed to be, oh, I I already know who this is. What the fuck?

SPEAKER_02 51:31

Yeah, why did it make it feel like it was a reveal when we all knew what it was for a long time? Also, let's just talk about the fact that the scarecrow as a character was completely ruined with all of the backstory. Like you want to give us you want to give us the backstory of how he met his lover and then they started this thing. That's one thing. You want to give us that glimpse of that first kill at childhood? I can kind of get into that, but you just keep diving further and further into his backstory and his life and how they grew up and his dad and this whole town and then this bullshit. I just I think that the whole character is ruined. It's ruined so bad, man. If I go back and watch the 2008 one, even though they're not the same story, right? Like I'm gonna look at that and I'm just gonna be thinking this in my head for this character, and I'm not gonna be about it.

SPEAKER_00 52:23

Okay, but how can we rewrite The Strangers to be compelling again? Like, if you had to assign a lore, because here's what I want to think. I think the polycule of it all really fucked it up for me. I think the couple looking for a third, I think they're trying to get Maya in on it. I'm good. Like, just give me just give me a regular bat a ragtag team of of killers and we'll be straight. But I almost like to think, I'm going back to the original with like the the boys who were passing out pamphlets for their religion. What if the strangers were ex-Mormons or ex-Jehovah's Witnesses who really just went through some shit going door to door and then wanted to go live deliver punishment and purity? Maybe not. Like, let's have a crossover between Heretic and the strangers. And I think that could be a really interesting story.

SPEAKER_02 53:22

Why are you doing this because you didn't take my pamphlet?

SPEAKER_01 53:26

You know what? This this idea though, oh my gosh, it makes me think of a way for whoever is in charge. Look, I hope you're listening to our podcast, but whoever's in charge of the future of this franchise, there's a way to fix this. Okay, there is a very easy way to fix this, and that is to actually not ignore what you just did for the last three movies, go into a new movie with a whole new cast, and have some FBI person make a make a remark about oh, there was a series of copycat murders of the original murders, right? Mention it, validate it, and then okay, but it was copycats. And now we can move on to something more in the vein of like spiral from the book of Saw, perhaps, like a little bit grittier, more like not with the same ending, of course, but like something a bit more grounded, I think would would resolve what was done here because the characters are all over the place. It's almost drama, like I don't want to say CW drama, but it's it's almost like teen drama in a way, because these characters are so childish in their development. It's it's strange. The the work that we've done to go back in time and show us that I think Sean said it best, like when we had that little bit from chapter two, perfect, the perfect amount. We were like, oh my gosh, this is how long it's been going on. Show us nothing more of that. We're done with that. We've got the little bit of backstory, we don't need to hear him speak or say anything in you know his actual character when he's got the bag on his head. And so they kept going over that, but like we also don't need him to be one of the main characters that we've met at all without a bag on his head. We just need him to be this machine that chops people up, and that would be super effective. I think it was gonna work really well had that been the case, had we like had a red herring, oh, he could be the guy, and then it turns out he's actually decent and gets got in the last you know third of the movie. I would have been so happy with that. But for him to be like, yep, I'm the dude, and I was in love with her because we're both psychos. Cool one in, like it was just strange. Sometimes the most obvious choice is probably the right choice, and this is one of those cases.

SPEAKER_00 55:34

Do we think that Scarecrow is going to be eligible for the did it all for the nookie category? Because he really let his guard down in the spirit of eroticism and allure.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

Without any of the eroticism. Yes. There was no nookie, I don't think.

SPEAKER_00 55:49

He did it all for the sniffies of the shampoo.

SPEAKER_01 55:52

Oh no. That's just the worst part of this film, though, is the complete removal of sensible motivations for any of the characters' actions. I think we just left those behind in the previous two installments. And in this one, it was like, we're gonna have characters do things because we wrote them to do those things, not because it makes sense for who they are.

SPEAKER_02 56:12

Yeah, it's a tough one with this film. I try to pick out like the best moments of this movie, and I really think the best moments of this movie are really only the moments where we got glimpses of the vibe from what The Strangers used to be. You know, I'm and there were a couple of moments that landed in this film, it just was not the whole vibe, but when we got those, you kind of got excited, and those were the best parts of the movie. It's literally either giving it that or just saying that the best part of the movie is when it was finally over.

SPEAKER_01 56:46

There's a couple of good parts to it, aside from that. The soundtrack is one of them. Sure, sure. Now it was misused because of the plot, but the soundtrack itself was phenomenal and would have worked really well. I think visually also really good looking movie. I don't know if you all pay attention to this now, but I always look for shallow depth of field because once it's been pointed out that every like streaming service overuses it, I'm looking for movies and TV shows that overuse it. And I don't think they really did here. I think they captured some full frame, in-focus shots, and and I enjoyed that. So I think the best part of the movie is how it looks and how it sounds.

SPEAKER_00 57:21

I am 100% aligned with you, Mac. This movie is something really pleasant to look at. If you need something decent looking to throw on in the background while you do other tasks, sure. I can't say there's much else to throw this movie in terms of a bone. But there's this also this idea of okay, there's gonna be a cut, an extended cut, a re-edit of the movie. It's gonna be about three hours long. But no, I just fucking can't, guys. I can't. Somewhere in these three movies, there is the rough draft of a better movie, but I've already given too much of my AMCA list to of my time of my energy to these three movies in particular, and it progressively got worse every step of the way. And so I just I can't be convinced otherwise. I'm I'm not watching this again.

SPEAKER_02 58:16

Oh man, it's a tough one. Yeah, I really wanted to say that I would re-watch all of this as a complete trilogy, but I honestly don't really know if I can bring myself to do it now. I I feel like I want to do it because it is a trilogy. Like anytime someone puts out a trilogy, I'm like, oh, immediately, once they're all out, I gotta watch them back to back and just see how it flows. But I don't know if I can do it.

SPEAKER_01 58:38

I don't want to do it. I'll be honest about that. I would, however, do it if somebody did make a supercut of the trilogy into one good film, maybe like two hours, two hours, fifteen minutes long. Take the best parts, leave out the worst parts, which is a lot of you know, chapter two and chapter three. Give us that little taste of that the fact that there was an origin, but nothing more than that. And I'd be tempted to watch that supercut. But as it stands right now, if I was going to re-watch any strangers, it would be The Strangers, the original.

SPEAKER_00 59:10

Well, it remains to be seen if anyone will dare to give this franchise the time of day for another three-hour theatrical release or even more films. That is actually, I think, the the biggest bummer for me is the idea that this is gonna taint and stain the reputation of the strangers. But for now, there you have it, folks. The Strangers Chapter 3 from 2026 has been a universal hack. While we've certainly had a robust discussion here, the conversation about this movie doesn't end here by any means.

SPEAKER_02 59:37

If you want to find out what's on the other side of our door and go further than this episode, consider supporting the show by visiting patreon.com/slash hackerslash. This is where you can honestly enjoy even more of the show, including bonus content with early access, extended episodes, movie nominations, and live shows.

SPEAKER_00 59:57

We'll see you next time, folks, and remember, now we're even.