Renny Harlin on How The Strangers Chapter 2 Is ‘More Epic’ Than Chapter 1 | Interview
ComingSoon Senior Editor Brandon Schreur spoke to The Strangers – Chapter 2 director Renny Harlin about helming the new Lionsgate horror sequel movie. Harlin discussed how Chapter 2 differs from Chapter 1, filming all three Strangers movies at the same time, and more.
“The Strangers are back – more brutal and relentless than ever,” the official synopsis reads. “When they learn that one of their victims, Maya (Madelaine Petsch), is still alive, they return to finish what they’ve started. With nowhere to run and no one to trust, Maya must survive another horrific chapter of terror as The Strangers – driven by a senseless, unceasing purpose – pursue her, more than willing to kill anyone who stands in their way.”
The Strangers – Chapter 2 will be released in United States theaters on September 26, 2025, from Lionsgate.
Brandon Schreur: Renny, I really liked The Strangers – Chapter 1 and I liked The Strangers – Chapter 2, but I think the thing I was most impressed about, here, is how different they feel from one another. This is obviously a sequel set in the same world and all of that, but the first one is such a claustrophobic home invasion thriller that’s tense in all those kinds of ways. In Chapter 2, you expand it so we go outside of that cabin and into the city. And it takes place over a couple of days. How would you say things have changed from Chapter 1 to Chapter 2? What should audiences prepare themselves for and expect in this new one?
Renny Harlin: Good question. I must say, there was always an element of frustration that we experienced making the first one. We wanted to pay homage to the original Strangers by Bryan Bertino. We didn’t want to copy it, but we wanted to use it as the premise of this series of movies and set up the stakes in the same way that they did in the original movie. At the same time, that put us in an unfavorable position of telling that same story, more or less, that was in the first movie.
So I was always chomping at the bit to get to the second movie, to be able to show the audience where we go with the characters and everything else. In a funny way, for me, the second movie, the second chapter, was kind of like my Rambo, the first Rambo movie, First Blood. You know, it’s a survival movie, and I wanted to make this kind of more epic. The first movie, it’s a home invasion, so let’s call this a town invasion. Now we get to explore the town more, the surrounding forests, and different locations — it was an opportunity to make it bigger and still concentrate laser-sharply on our main character and her psychological journey. And also start revealing bits and pieces about the Strangers without changing the fact that the attacks are random and there’s no rhyme or reason to this.
But, yeah. I wanted this movie to feel very different from the first one. Same characters, same paranoia, but totally different setting.
Yeah, town invasion. I like that. That sums it up really good — the whole place is creepy and you don’t know who you can trust or anything like that. You shot The Strangers Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 all at the same time. I’m sure that was no small feat and that there were all kinds of challenges that came with doing something like that. Now that everything is said and done, you’ve filmed the movies and they’re coming out, is this something you’d ever want to try again? Do you feel like you’ve learned something from this experience that would equip you for the future, or is it a case of once was good?
Oh, no. All I’ve learned is that I would insist on having more time. Now we’ve shot three movies in 53 days, and that was tough. The challenge was that we were shooting, literally, to amortize the sets. We have some sets in common in all three movies, though they are very different. But there are certain sets that we use more or less in all three movies. Once we are in a certain setting, we shoot all three movies there. We might, one morning, be shooting Chapter 2, and in the evening we’re shooting Chapter 1, and the next morning shooting Chapter 3. That made it a challenge for the actors to always be in the right emotional place. Make-up people to have the blood and gore match. And for all of us just to remember where are we and how intense should this be — are we in a lull or are we in a peak?
The privilege was, how often as a filmmaker do you get to explore the characters for four and a half hours instead of one and a half hours? So, having a 273-page script was incredible, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I’d love to do it. But I’d say that we need more time.
That makes total sense. There’s a moment in this movie that I’m dying to talk to you about. Right at the beginning, in the hospital. I’m such a sucker for one-shots in movies, and I loved it when the Strangers are walking around the different rooms, trying to find her. It’s filmed so great, and it’s so tense. Can you tell me a little bit about filming that moment? Were there any big challenges you had to deal with to make that all work?
Thank you, yeah. I’m glad that you pointed that out. It was just something that I wanted to explore, not to impress people or be a fancy filmmaker or anything like that. But I just felt like that environment lent itself to something like that in a very organic way. It took us several hours to rehearse the shot. It had to follow through the corridors, tell different story points, get the reveals of the threat in the right place and the right time, and all of that.
…The pacing, the rhythm, the reveals, and the misleads — it’s easier to do that when you’re doing it in the editing room and you’re getting all the beats right. But when you can’t edit and you have to edit it in camera, it takes time to design. Once we had rehearsed, it didn’t take that many takes to get exactly the take that we wanted.
Thanks to Renny Harlin for taking the time to discuss The Strangers – Chapter 2.
Source: Comingsoon.net