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Sup guys?! Long time no see! I have been busy with life my good ol' friends here at UHM. It's been 10 years since I first joined the site as a member this year.
However I am not here to talk about my life story, but about this pretty nice sequel to the, IMO, somewhat disappointing "Strangers". I have to say that I was beginning to get a little pissed at first, but as the film progresses, it gets better.
This time the sequel centers on a family of four (husband, wife, son, and daughter) who are taking a road trip to send the daughter to boarding school. They happen to make a stop at their aunt and uncles trailer park resort (yes a trailer park resort LOL!) to rest up before continuing on their trip. But little do they know that the resort has been invaded by those manipulative, sneaky, smooth walking, knife/ax wielding Strangers (Pin-up girl, Dollface, and Man in a mask)and they slowly, and excessively terrorized by the family.
Now as you can see the plot is really simple, and so is the film with a running time of about an hour and 15 minutes, so it doesn't take too long for things to get started. What I liked most about the film is it's deserted setting and it's homage to 70's and 80's slasher flicks, as well as it's sound track and score. You will see in the film how it pays homages to "Christine" "Halloween" "Friday the 13th" and in the end "Texas Chainsaw Massacre". The score was very alerting and played right when needed be, the soundtrack was very effective as some of the songs would add more suspense to scene and give personality to the strangers themselves (such as the pool scene). I also like that there was a little bit of blood in this film versus the original, yes things do get a little bloody but nothing to write home about. I think the set pieces were cool as well, the setting helps build up the dread, and the "strangers" themselves are as good as ever, even if they do tend to get a bit annoying at times. Mentioning characters, I did come to like the family as the film went on, even though they kind of annoyed me when they first came to meet the strangers.
So now that I have said the things I love about this film, what I dislike most was the stupid shit the characters do and a sense of logic is no where to be found. For instance, when a character comes face to face with one of the strangers with a gun in his hand pointed directly at them, he runs instead of shooting them (TF!), or how when a door is open to an abandoned trailer, instead of them walking away, they walk right in not knowing if anyone is there or not, and mess around with things, then when they hear a noise they ask who's there! And there is also the "split up" factor, where two characters go here and two others go there, typical slasher film b.s. And even though I felt the film did succeed at using it's setting and score wisely, I wish there would have been an element of "surprise" that could have made it great instead of just good and typical.
But overall the strangers was a good fun watch at the theaters and I must say that I enjoyed it and all the homages it paid to movies I love from the 70's and 80's. I wanted to give this movie an 8 but it kinda disappointed me with it's questionable, open ending. So I give it an 7.5 out of 10