Director Renny Harlin Discusses Gritty Horror Sequel 'The Strangers: Chapter 2'
Renny Harlin, having worked consistently in the horror industry for the better part of three decades, is still finding ways to try new things in a genre that has become notorious for standing still in recent years. In his latest effort - ’The Strangers: Chapter 2’ - Harlin follows his first film up with a gritty thriller sequel focused solely on survival.
Set in the direct wake of the first movie’s ending, in which Maya (Madelaine Petsch) narrowly escapes the titular villains, ending up in a hospital, Chapter 2 takes the more slasher-esque proclivities of the first movie and opts instead of an “eat or be eaten” kind of approach… only, of course, with knife-wielding maniacs at the forefront. Throughout this second chapter, Maya runs, hides, duels and, at times, even weeps. It’s an unexpectedly raw take, though sensibly so, given the character’s recent tragic background and the film’s more realistic take on the happenings at hand.
Ahead of the film’s end-of-month release date, Harlin broke his directorial process down with us, from the tonal swap, to shooting three (one unreleased) movies back to back, and much more. He and his team shot Strangers one, two, and three, “not just back to back, but on top of each other,” he said. “We shot all three movies in one ago.”
On this complicated, unorthodox approach, Harlin expounded: “Super challenging… everybody, from the actors to the crew, had to always be exactly in sync. So, it was challenging, but it was a fantastic opportunity to be able to do something like that.”
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Harlin described shooting one movie on Monday, and an entirely different one on Tuesday. From costume changes to cosmetic details, much of the process was ensuring continuity between shoots and making sure everyone involved was on the same page. “Instead of your normal hour and a half, two hour movie,” he continued, “to be able to explore this story and the characters for like four and a half hours, and then break that down into three movies.”
The result, as they release, are three projects in perfect step with one another, whilst also maintaining visual and thematic distinction between the lines. Where the first film preferred yellow hues and tighter, more contained spaces, the second flashes red lights and opens the environment up in a naturally unceasing manner.
Further, Chapter 2 is a much quieter movie, significantly more concerned with giving characters room to breathe and, quite purposely, leaving things unsaid more often than not. “I wanted to make a movie that is kind of like a survival story, like First Blood or The Revenant, in a sense that you really push the actor to their limit and push the character mentally and physically, to their limit,” Harlin said.
“And I love the fact that we probably have a half an hour sequence in the movie where there’s no dialogue, we let the visuals speak… we’re able to keep the dread, and anxiety, and paranoia going without having to be closed in, in a house.”
While it’s traditional for a slasher to confine itself to the inside of a home, Harlin’s ability to maintain the new film’s genre-adhesion whilst also pulling it away from many of the things that generally define the genre works wonders to set it apart. On making sure that each movie looks, feels, and plays differently, despite being shot simultaneously, Harlin emphasized the importance of that process, saying, “We put a lot of thought into that.”
“We talked about camera language, what kind of lenses we’re using, what kind of angles we’re doing… we kind of built an arc for all the three movies - how they will develop - and I shot-listed every shot, of all the three movies,” he revealed.
“Everything was planned beforehand,” Harlin finished, and you can feel that in the final product. The Strangers: Chapter 2, set to hit theaters just before October, is a good representation of a positive change on the slasher movie landscape. Harlin’s franchise sequel is wild, awfully gritty and, most importantly, clearly impassioned.
If the first two releases are any indication, audiences are in for a ride when the third, and assumedly final, movie hits theaters.