All The Strangers Movies In Order (Including Chapter 3)

The Strangers franchise began in 2008 when couple Kristen and James were terrorised by three masked figures in their holiday retreat. Home invasion films are very common, but director Bryan Bertino found a way to stand apart from the pack. One aspect of The Strangers that makes it so interesting is that the central couple are not the typical lovey-dovey pairing. In fact, their evening starts with a cloud hanging over their heads, with Kristen having rejected James’ proposal. The awkwardness between them lies thick in the air, but the arrival of the creepy nocturnal visitor asking for Tamara changes everything. Soon, the pair are doing everything they can to save each other, their love for one another overriding any hurt feelings. 

During the opening moments, The Strangers proclaims to have been inspired by true events, but rather than one case, Bertino was inspired by a range of stories. First, there was his own experience of being home alone as a child and answering the door to a stranger asking for someone who didn’t live there, then there were the crimes committed by the Manson Family, which involved home invasions and callous brutality. Of all the films in the series, this is perhaps the toughest to watch as it's the only time that the chilling reason the murderous threesome have targeted their victims really lands. From this point on, the audience already knows their reason, and so each subsequent ‘reveal’ is a case of diminishing returns. 

Although The Strangers was a box-office success, it took a decade for its sequel, The Strangers: Prey at Night, to arrive. Directed this time by Johannes Roberts, the sequel begins after the events of the first film and opens with Dollface, Scarecrow, and Pin-Up Girl massacring a couple in a trailer park. The next day, the relatives of these new victims arrive for a scheduled family visit and find themselves the new targets. Switching from a couple to a family unit is a clever progression to distance itself from the original, but the film has a greater onus on action, which doesn’t always work. There is, however, one exceptional sequence involving a beautifully neon-lit swimming pool and Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ that is well worth your time.

In comparison to its predecessor, The Strangers: Prey at Night made $31 million from a budget of $5 million. So, although still profitable, it was significantly less financially successful than the first movie, but it has had a lasting life since arriving on streaming. 

After the less-than-stellar performance of The Strangers: Prey at Night, a new approach was adopted for the third film. Announced as a full standalone trilogy that would also act as a reboot of The Strangers, The Strangers: Chapter 1 was released in 2024. All three films in the new trilogy are directed by Renny Harlin, who is better known for his work in action cinema. Harlin did get his start in horror, however, having directed A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. 

As the opening film in this fresh attempt to revive the series, The Strangers: Chapter 1 is a fairly solid reworking of the original film. This time, the central couple are Maya and Ryan. The pair are driving cross-country for an interview and, after experiencing car troubles, finds themselves stranded in the isolated town of Venus, Oregon. As luck would have it, there is an empty holiday rental available, and so the couple reluctantly hunker down for the night. Then they receive a strange knock at the door from a young girl asking for ‘Tamara’, and all hell breaks loose. A very familiar retread until its finale, The Strangers: Chapter 1 works as a new beginning, especially for those with no previous knowledge of the original. 

Rather than release a month after Chapter 1 as originally planned, it took a whole year for The Strangers: Chapter 2 to be released. The story picks up immediately after the ending of the first chapter, throwing a still very injured Maya back into the maelstrom once more. By continuing Maya’s story, The Strangers: Chapter 2 moves into brand new territory, but it doesn’t seem quite sure what it wants to do. The film suffers from ‘middle film syndrome’ - it lacks a distinct identity of its own and exists merely to connect the first and final chapters. 

The opening half of the movie is a clear homage to Halloween II, but then the film essentially becomes just one long chase sequence. The Strangers: Chapter 2 also commits the big horror sin of trying to explain its monsters, and so the main story is intercut with flashbacks that reveal the origins of Dollface, Scarecrow, and Pin-Up Girl. It’s horrifically generic and ensures that this second chapter plays more as a comedy than a suspenseful horror. As repetitive and ridiculous as The Strangers: Chapter 2 is, it has to be watched, not only as the middle movie connective tissue, but also for the arrival of a boar. Its surprise arrival is so shocking that it had cinema audiences questioning if they had hallucinated it, or accidentally had a reel from another movie spliced in by accident. 

The final Strangers film for now is The Strangers: Chapter 3. The concluding chapter in Renny Harlin’s trilogy, the story once more joins Maya, who by now is held together with more tape than John Wick. Having seemingly vanquished one of the killer trio during Chapter 2, Maya must now take down the others. For the audience's sake, she needs to be successful, as this new trilogy has not worked out as well as it could have. While the quality doesn’t match the original, one can’t help but think that the original plan to release once a month would have made the narrative flow better. Psychologically, the year between each chapter makes the story feel as though it has dragged on. 

Renny Harlin has recently revealed that there is a single version of his The Strangers story. Rather than three movies, the director has made a super-cut version, a la Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. According to producer Courtney Solomon, this version will eventually get a short cinema release ahead of a streaming launch and teases the inclusion of two more Strangers: Witch Face and Ghost Skull.