Most horror fans seem to be in agreement that Renny Harlin’s new trilogy of The Strangers tales has been misguided from the start, with Chapter 1 debuting in theaters back in May 2024 and Chapter 2 coming along in September 2025. The third and final installment, The Strangers: Chapter 3, was released into movie theaters nationwide over the weekend.
How did Chapter 3 fare at the box office? Well, the final piece of this lackluster new trilogy starring Madelaine Petsch just had the lowest opening weekend in the franchise’s history.
The Strangers: Chapter 3 opened in 2,565 theaters across the United States over the weekend with just $3.5 million, ending this franchise trilogy experiment on quite the sour note.
Chapter 3 opened in EIGHTH PLACE at the U.S. box office, bested by horror movies including Sam Raimi’s Send Help, Markiplier’s Iron Lung, and Luc Besson’s Dracula.
For the sake of comparison, the original film opened to $20.9 million in 2008, followed by Prey at Night with $10.4 million, Chapter 1 with $11.8 million, and Chapter 2 with $5.8 million.
It’s interesting to note that Renny Harlin’s three Strangers movies were shot back-to-back in 2022, with the second and third installments later undergoing reshoots based on the reactions to Chapter 1. Alas, it doesn’t seem to have mattered much. All three films are rotten on Rotten Tomatoes, with The Strangers: Chapter 3 currently sitting at a dismal 17%.
Mind you, even Bryan Bertino’s original home invasion movie has a 50% score on Rotten Tomatoes, but Harlin’s films have been the saga’s most negatively received across the board.
Meagan Navarro wrote in her review for Bloody Disgusting, “The bizarre experiment has finally reached its end. Madelaine Petsch’s exhausted final girl Maya has been on the run for one night of grueling hell, stretched far too thin across three separate films. However, instead of a full circle reckoning, The Strangers: Chapter 3 crawls toward its confused conclusion.”
In the final chapter of this new reboot trilogy, “Maya (Madelaine Petsch) faces the masked killers one last time in a brutal, full-circle reckoning of survival and revenge.”
There has been talk of all three of Renny Harlin’s movies being edited into a single supercut, one that would feature two new masked killers that were ultimately removed from the versions we’ve seen. It’s hard to imagine there being that much of a demand for a supercut trilogy at this point, but we’ll keep you posted if we hear anything further about a release.
