Spoilers for The Strangers – Chapter 3 

The Strangers, as a trilogy, has left me, amongst many, with mixed feelings. It scared me, it brought me to the edge of my seat, and it made me root for Maya (Madelaine Petsch), the tormented protagonist. And while I have been left with an unsettling feeling, it’s one of uncertainty – it felt like something was missing.

The Strangers Chapter 3 concluded the trilogy, finally giving Maya a chance to escape from the clutches of the three terrifying masked murderers known as the Strangers. Having killed one of them at the end of the second film, Maya may have weakened their abilities, but this murder instead led the killers to kidnap Maya and force her to become one of them, handing her the mask of their deceased beloved. Maya then must figure out how to take them down from the inside, which unfortunately felt all too easy.

While this led to some exhilarating moments of panic for me as a viewer, Maya’s sudden decision to brutally kill Dollface (Olivia Kreutzova) had no implications, as Scarecrow (Gabriel Basso), the final Stranger, barely reacted to this murder. I felt as if more could’ve been done to make this crucial moment feel like it had higher stakes, as this would’ve made me feel more panicked on Maya’s behalf, instead of making me relax, knowing she’d survive the scene.

While moments like this felt strange (pun intended), the backstory that the third and final film provided for the previous films wrapped up the ‘Tamara’ storyline well, delving into the Strangers’ childhood and teenage lives and revealing their connection to the mysterious motel room where they murdered many victims.

Also delivered was a tense final moment between Maya and Scarecrow (otherwise known as Gabriel). In their last scene together, the candlelit atmosphere and the intense body language shockingly managed to make me question whether Maya was going to remain the hero, or whether she was going to join Scarecrow in his serial killing. Safe to say she stayed the hero until the end, but Madelaine Petsch did an incredible job of creating a horrible pit in my stomach for that minute where I doubted Maya’s intentions, and from the silence in the cinema, I could tell that this was a feeling that resonated across viewers.

I did enjoy this chapter of the trilogy, and I thought it put forward some quite thrilling conclusions to complete the various storylines, but as I’ve said, some moments did fall quite flat, meaning I left the cinema feeling like more could’ve been done to make the film a bit more interesting, as well as to make it stand out from not just the other films in its trilogy, but from other horror films in general.

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