The first look at Renny Harlin’s The Strangers Trilogy is here, and there are fresh details on precisely what is going on with these films.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Deep Blue Sea and Die Hard 2 director Harlin discusses his love for the original movie, filming an entire trilogy simultaneously, and keeping aspects of Bryan Bertino’s 2008 movie.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 First Look and New Details
The EW piece has exclusive shots from The Strangers Chapter 1 alongside the discussion with Harlin which you can see below.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 stars Madelaine Petsch (Riverdale) as a young woman named Maya starting a new life with her fiancé Ryan, played by Froy Gutierrez (Teen Wolf, Cruel Summer). During a road trip stop at a remote vacation rental in the woods, they become the prey of a mysterious gang of masked strangers who attack without warning or reason. Harlin explains that the first film, written by Alan R. Cohen & Alan Freedland, “is close to the original movie in its set-up of a young couple in an isolated environment in a house and a home invasion happening for random reasons.”
Why a trilogy? Well, Harlin goes on to say it helps “explore what happens to the victims of this kind of violence and who the perpetrators are of this kind of violence. Where are they coming from and why?”
Renny Harlin who has previously made horror films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 and Exorcist: The Beginning, also talked about the fun he had juggling a trilogy of movies whilst filming The Strangers Trilogy in Slovakia last year.
“the challenge of a lifetime, but I also really embraced it. On a Monday morning, I could be shooting the second chapter, and Monday afternoon, I could be shooting the first chapter; and Tuesday morning, I could be shooting the third chapter. It was incredibly demanding for the actors, for the continuity in terms of the make-up and wardrobe, and for my director of photography, because we wanted to create a visual language that develops so that the movies get bigger, more epic, as we go [on]. It just kept all of our juices pumping all the time.”
You can read more about Harlin’s time on the project in the entire Entertainment Weekly piece.
The Strangers Trilogy is due to released in its entirety next year.
