Day 1 of New York Comic Con 2023 featured a sneak peek at the upcoming horror film, The Strangers: Chapter 1, as well as a glimpse at some of the plans behind the ambitious new project.
While the films are based on the 2008 home invasion thriller which starred Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, it’s not a remake or reboot. It’s a trilogy of movies that are an extension of the franchise, as director Renny Harlin (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Street, Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, Deep Blue Sea) and producer Courtney Solomon explained to fans in attendance. They also showed three exclusive clips from Chapter 1 and even brought along the masks the actors portraying the Strangers wore during production.
As for the release schedule of the trilogy, they confirmed during an audience Q&A at the end of the panel that all three movies have been shot and the plan is to release all of them in 2024, if Lionsgate agrees to the condensed release schedule (a release date for Chapter 1 has not yet been announced). The duo were much more tight-lipped, however, about spilling any plot details about the second and third films.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 stars Madelaine Petsch (Riverdale) and Froy Gutierrez (Teen Wolf, Cruel Summer) as a couple in the midst of a cross-country journey to start a new life in the Pacific Northwest. But their dreams of happiness are derailed when they are terrorized by criminals in incredibly creepy masks while vacationing at an Airbnb.
“A friend of mine called me and said he had the rights to do more Strangers movies, and he asked if I wanted to remake [it],” explained Solomon. “It’s a beloved horror movie. It was terrifying because it was real; that could happen to anyone. That’s why I think it’s compelling and interesting … because it really touches you.”
When moderator Josh Horowitz, the host of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, remarked that this project marked Harlin’s return to horror in many years, he mentioned that his first American film, Prison, was a horror movie.
“I have to credit my mom for my horror roots,” the Finnish director says. “She showed me Psycho when I was 6 years old. When I was 8, I graduated to Rosemary’s Baby. I fell in love with horror because it allowed me to tell different types of stories. We go to the movies to cry, to laugh or be scared. And then we can go back to our everyday lives. And the original Strangers movie is one of my favorite films ever.”
Harlin was excited to tackle the project, but admits he was taken aback when Solomon handed him a script that was 288 pages long. “I called Courtney after I read it in about nine hours, and he explained there was a plan to go much deeper, than just a reboot,” Harlin says. “And I begged to do it. I wanted to do it for the fans, and for the new generation that perhaps has not seen the original.”
“We looked at the original movie for inspiration, and the sequel. We wanted to reboot the original and pay homage to it, and ended up with the 288-page script that Renny always reminds me of,” Solomon says.
The massive script, in short, was by design. The idea from the beginning was to tell one interconnected story that would be broken up into three cinematic chapters that could stand alone, while showing the evolution of the characters.
“For us, it was shot as one giant movie,” Harlan notes. “Even though it’s three separate films.”
As with almost any film, the script changed along the way. Solomon said one advantage to shooting all three movies at once — in Slovakia, incidentally — is that it allowed them to spot certain scenes that didn’t work anymore in the framework of the overall story.
The three clips shown to the audience all showcase Maya (Petsch) in various stages of distress. The film’s antagonists, the masked Strangers, appear in each. One scene where Maya is inside the house includes a creepy callback to the 2008 original, and Solomon says The Strangers trilogy has a number of Easter eggs for diehard fans of the original.
Harlin says he wanted to rely on sound, instead of the standard jump scares, to scare the audience. “We don’t want to manipulate the audience, or create jump scares to just make them say, ‘boo,’” he says. To back up his point, he notes how the music in one of the clips shown during the panel featured no music, just a low-key sound effect that the director used to instill the audience with “a feeling of dread.”
Many actors were auditioned for the role of Maya, but no one impressed Harlin and Solomon more than Petsch. “When we did the interview with Mads … she interviewed us,” Solomon says. “The Strangers is her favorite horror movie and she had 21 pages of notes for the interview. Renny and I looked at each other about 5 minutes in, and we knew.”
“Liv Tyler did an incredible job in the first movie, “Harlan says. “So how do we replace her? You don’t, so we wanted to find something different. Someone who can be a regular person, appear vulnerable and go through this ordeal. When we shot the film, we felt we had won the lottery. I don’t think any other actor could do what she does in this film.”
Harlin and Solomon both pointed out that shooting three films concurrently is an immense challenge for all involved, but especially for the actors. But they said Petsch made it look easy.
“If you’re shooting Chapters 1, 2, 3 with an actor, where she goes through such a huge character arc, the trust has to be there. And she never let us down. She always showed up and knew where she was supposed to be every day.”
Harlin’s filmography is littered with crowd-pleasing blockbusters, and he says part of that success comes from always considering the audience when he’s making a film.
“When I had my first hit film, Nightmare 4, I was in my 20s,” he recalls. “The head of the studio took me in a limo and we went around town to see audience reactions. We stopped outside a theater on Sunset Blvd and saw people lined up around the block, and I asked what was going on. He said, ‘Renny, they’re here for your movie. When the audience responds to your movies, it’s life-changing.’ “
One area where Harlin knew he had no room for error was with the masks worn by the killers. Those masks were one of the signature elements of the original Strangers movie. “They are iconic,” the director says. “There is no secret vault in Hollywood where we can go and get the Strangers masks. We had to make them from scratch.”
Harlin wanted to update the masks for 2023, but only slightly. He was adamant they remain faithful to the originals. “A lot of people failed [at making them]. We needed them to work in all lighting situations,” he says. “The masks were not finished until the first day of filming.”
The masks were tailored to fit each actor’s face perfectly. When filming began, they only had two masks, which added another level of anxiety to the filmmaking process. “If one had broken, we would have been screwed,” Harlin admits.
Before the panel ended, we learned two key details about the Strangers trilogy. The first is that the time frame for all three films spans only a few days. “The very first scene of the second film follows the very last scene in the first movie, and the first scene in the third film follows the last scene in Chapter Two,” he says.
The other big reveal is that the third movie will reveal the origin of the Strangers from the original movie. Harlin says that the end of the third film was completely overhauled during production, and calls the new version “extremely satisfying.” Harlin added that he believes the audience will be stunned by the story’s conclusion.
