The Strangers star shares one reason why new trilogy is better than original

While Madelaine Petsch has a lot of love for the 2008 movie The Strangers, she’s shared one reason why the new trilogy is better than the original. 

The Strangers: Chapter 1 is the first entry of an upcoming trio of new horror movies directed by Renny Harlin, and while they feature the same masked psychopaths as the previous two Strangers flicks, they are standalone films rather than reboots or remakes. 

Petsch is joined by Froy Gutierrez as the leading couple, Maya and Ryan, whose pitstop in a remote town turns into a living nightmare when their Airbnb is stalked by unwanted guests. 

Dexerto caught up with the Riverdale star to find out more about the new Strangers trilogy, and there’s one reason why she thinks it’s scarier than the original horror movie.

“The only reason I say this is more bone-chilling is because you’re spending more time with the character,” Petsch tells us. 

“You’ve got three full films to be on this journey with Maya, our lead. And so it’s honestly just different. 

“People will compare it naturally because it’s a similar setup. But it’s really just a launchpad for a departure of this kind of character study of Maya, who is pushed past her breaking point.

“And you’re left with the question, ‘Who do you become then?’ So it just feels like it’s more of a character study and a psychological question by the end of the third chapter.”

All that being said, Petsch made it clear that she’s a “huge fan” of Bryan Bertino’s 2008 The Strangers, in which Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman portray Kristen and James, a couple whose weekend away is disrupted by three masked killers. 

“I feel like that was probably the scariest movie I’d ever seen, because it could actually happen,” she adds. “I love hyperrealism horror.”

Similarly, Harlin shared a lot of love for the original. “I was definitely intimidated when I when I received the script because I love the original The Strangers and I didn’t want to make a sequel to it or remake it,” he told us.

But when he received the script and it was 280 pages long, he knew it would be “something different.”

“So from the get go, the idea was that we want to re-imagine the Strangers story. And, of course, the jumping off point is the original movie; we have a young couple who are in a house, and and it’s a home invasion story by these three strangers,” he adds.

“But that’s just a jumping off point, and that’s what the first movie sets up. Then we go to this epic saga that is four and a half hours long and split into three movies.

“That’s what really drew my interest into this because I realized that we’re not trying to remake the original movie; we’re using it as a basis for an epic story about serial killers and their victims.”

The Strangers: Chapter 1 drops in cinemas on May 17. For more horror, check out the best horror movies streaming on Amazon Prime Video. You can also find the new movies releasing in May.