I really liked the first of these movies, "The Strangers." I didn't expect to like it. I'd seen the whole idea of this movie done before, most notably with the French film "Ils," and that movie was spectacular, so I didn't see how another movie could even come close. It got to me, though. The music, the acting, the setting, it all came together and created a movie that was surprisingly good. When I heard they were making a sequel, my first thought was "oh here we go." Everything bad that I feared would happen in the first movie would happen here instead.
This movie's poster claims that it's based on true events. That's a huge lie, of course. The original might gave been partly inspired by some things that actually happened, but this movie is totally fiction. It's about a family on a road trip, a mother, father, teenage son and teenage daughter traveling to drop the daughter off at a sort of "boot camp" for troubled teens. Unfortunately, when they arrive, they instead run into the titular "strangers," who are bent on tormenting them.
The biggest problem with this movie is that I've seen all this before, done better, in the first movie. I know what's going to happen here, and where the first movie had the luxury of a slow build that added to the terror, this movie jumps right in much sooner, because we all know what's coming.
It's kind of a shame too, because there's nothing inherently wrong with this movie . There are some good scares, some really creepy scenes, and the acting isn't bad. If I saw this movie and I'd never seen the first one, I'd think this was really good and not even know there was something much better out there. Ever hear the saying "second verse, same as the first, only a little bit louder and a little bit worse"? That should be the tagline for this movie. It gets props for using two of my favorite songs in crucial scenes, but it just doesn't live up to the legacy of the first movie.
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