All 5 Strangers Horror Movies, Ranked

Of the universal fears most of us share, there's nothing like hearing an undiscernible noise in the middle of the night when you think you're alone. It usually turns out to be nothing, yet it's near impossible to shake off that immediate terror of potentially being watched by something in the dark. With that, it's no wonder "The Strangers" became such an easily relatable horror phenomenon that has terrified audiences for nearly two decades. Bryan Bertino's 2008 conceptual chiller about a couple being terrorized by three masked individuals as an act of random violence doesn't immediately scream franchise material. Still, Johannes Roberts and Renny Harlin managed to build a slasher franchise around these killers, with some entries being significantly stronger than others.

Today, we'll be taking a look at all five films in the "Strangers" series and rank them according to how successful they are in fulfilling their horror movie premise. There's an argument to be made that the Renny Harlin reboot trilogy shouldn't be counted individually. But considering the massive four and a half hour project was edited, marketed, and sold as three separate ticket prices for audiences to see in theaters, that is how they will be examined.

It probably should have been a bad omen when Renny Harlin announced that his reboot trilogy was going to delve into how the Strangers became the Strangers. This premise pretty much negates what made these antagonists scary to begin with. Nevertheless, you won't find anything in "The Strangers: Chapter 1" that actually contributes to this fundamentally flawed idea — it's really more of a dreadful remake of the 2008 film. The key difference is that the main couple, Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and Ryan (Troy Gutierrez), are the "strangers" of the story. Upon experiencing car trouble in the hilariously ominous small town of Venus, Oregon, the couple are courted with a local AirBnB cabin to spend the night. But it doesn't take long before they're tormented by three masked killers in the middle of the night.

The inaugural film in Harlin's trilogy is by far the worst entry in the series on the basis of its derivative scares, terrible performances, and complete lack of identity. It also doesn't help that Petsch and Gutierrez have the romantic chemistry of driftwood. "Chapter 1" is filled with over-reheated leftovers that border on plagiarism considering how closely Harlin repeats many of the same story beats, including a couple with an unsure future, an accidental casualty, and the iconic final confrontation. At least Gus Van Sant's "Psycho" took some creative liberties with Alfred Hitchcock's material. The film is also an eyesore to look at too, with its setting immersed in flat, murky lighting that never makes this isolated environment come to life. The only positive in its favor is that, unlike most multi-part film sagas of late, it at least has the courage to let people know upfront that they're only getting a third of a movie.

"The Strangers: Chapter 2" is a marginal improvement over its predecessor if only because it's rooted in new territory — but not by much. The film picks up right where "Chapter 1" left off with a wounded Maya (Madelaine Petsch) waking up in the hospital after the Scarecrow, Pin-Up Girl, and Dollface murder her husband at the cabin. What follows is a lifeless middle chapter that can hardly be called a movie. It's largely a feature-length chase movie where nothing of note really happens. Renny Harlin is no stranger to directing sequels in horror franchises ("A Nightmare on Elm Street," "The Exorcist"), but "Chapter 2" marks a new low. The Finnish filmmaker confuses prolonged tedium for atmosphere. He kills any momentum he could have gained with uninspired homages to Rick Rosenthal's "Halloween II" and "Eden Lake."

The ultimate failure of "Chapter 2" is that it's preoccupied with creating an air of suspense around who could be behind the "Strangers" masks, yet its suspects are deeply unmemorable. Everyone in Venus is already incapable of not acting like a total weirdo, so the revelation that the waitress Shelley (Ema Horvath) is not only Pin-Up Girl but the catalyst for the whole killing spree enterprise lands with a thud. This listless sequel is perpetually trapped in a self-serious funk that prevents it from having any fun with the deviations. It also doesn't help that this supposedly grounded reboot is one step removed from becoming an officially sanctioned parody of itself.

"Chapter 2" doesn't come to a conclusion so much as an ellipsis. It calls the entire endeavor of turning the "Strangers" trilogy into question, but at least it's a different kind of boring than "Chapter 1."

"The Strangers: Chapter 3" is simultaneously the best and worst entry in Renny Harlin's misguided trilogy. It's such a colossal trainwreck of a horror movie that you almost have to see to believe. The scare-free finale opts to throw all of its cards on the table by having Maya (Madelaine Petsch) discover what led Scarecrow (Gabriel Basso), Pin-Up Girl (Ema Horvath), and Dollface (Krystal Ellsworth) to become the titular slashers — and it's a real doozy, folks. Somewhere in this convoluted mess of a horror trilogy is a psychological deconstruction of youthful delinquency breeding serial killers in the vein of Rob Zombie's "Halloween" movies. But Harlin, while having made great films in the past, is very much not up to the task. "Chapter 3" is an embarrassing mess with the nerve to introduce ideas about the nature of violence knowing full well it never intends to unpack them in any meaningful way. There's also the matter of this R-rated slasher movie shying away from the bloodshed in such a distracting way that makes you wonder why they even bothered.

One of the biggest roadblocks with 'Chapter 3" building a story about the temptation of killing another human around Maya is that she's a thinly-written horror archetype masquerading as a character. Harlin leaves Petsch out to dry, as she's often a passive protagonist in her own movie. Not to mention that "Chapter 3" is so woefully underwritten by screenwriters Alan Freedland and Alan R. Cohen that threads about the town's complicity in the murders are pretty much abandoned. We need to have an immediate memorandum of movie villains telling the conflicted protagonist "we're the same." "Chapter 3" isn't disturbing, nor insightful. There's no way the Strangers as future horror villains ever recover from this.

Now that we're done with the reboot trilogy, it's time to remember why Bryan Bertino's 2008 thriller has endured as one of the most memorable horror movies of the 2000s. Images of a ravaged household in broad daylight paints a nasty picture and sets the template for the nightmarish home invasion that's partially based on a true story. At the center are Kristen (Liv Tyler) and James (Scott Speedman), a couple unaware that they're about to have the worst night of their lives. The tension is further intensified by the fact that their relationship is visibly on the rocks by way of a marriage proposal gone sideways. Tyler and Speedman are excellent at bringing you into their lives in that first third before the cat and mouse game takes over.

Unfortunately, the prologue and epilogue deflate a lot of the film's tension. We already know it's going to end on a bleak, nihilistic note from the get-go, which lessens the spontaneous impact of the Strangers' arrival. Where Bertino succeeds, however, is in those "hair standing up on the back of your neck" moments of fear where your worst nightmare is quietly out of your sight. Kristen smoking a cigarette in the kitchen with the Man in the Mask (Kip Weeks) peeking out of the dark is one of the all-time greatest movie scares. The randomness behind the killers' motive is ultimately what imbues the standard home invasion thriller with its long-lasting legacy, and rightfully so. There's a palpable dread that works to its advantage.

"The Strangers: Prey at Night" hardly made a blip when it came out in theaters over a decade after the 2008 film, yet time has proven to be immensely kind to it. Not only is Johannes Roberts' 2018 sequel the best "Strangers" movie by a wide margin, it's one of the greatest slashers of the 2010s. It follows the Man in the Mask (Damien Maffei), Pin-Up Girl (Lea Enslin) and Dollface (Emma Bellmoy) stalking a family staying the night at a largely empty mobile home park. The daughter Kinsey (Bailee Madison) is a troublemaker on her way to boarding school, with her Mom (Christina Hendricks), Dad (Martin Henderson) and brother (Lewis Pullman) trying to get through to her before they part ways. But the Strangers have other plans in store.

While "Prey at Night" doesn't feature any characters from the '08 film besides the killers, it makes the perfect companion piece. Roberts' brilliantly veers from home invasion horror to moody slasher without losing an ounce of its mean streak. There comes a point where the Strangers, all of whom possess distinguishable personalities, realize that the pendulum of death swings both ways. Roberts' work reflects a filmmaker who lives and breathes genre movies, and he takes full advantage of that here. Set to Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," the neon-drenched pool confrontation between Maffei's Man in the Mask and Pullman's Luke is a phenomenal set piece.

Plenty of folks have disregarded "Prey at Night" on grounds that it's not as nihilistic or terrifying as its predecessor, when it more than deserves its flowers for being its own beast with a fiery finale.