The Strangers Chapter 3: A Renny Harlin Interview -

Jeff:

Renny, welcome back to Action Reloaded.
It’s amazing to have you here, and it feels like we’ve done the whole journey, you know?
I think we’ve done, like, every Strangers movie maybe.

How does it feel, having reached the end goal of the trilogy?

Renny:
It’s bittersweet, and it’s incredibly satisfying.
It’s been a three-and-a-half-year journey, a little more.
And here we are at the conclusion finally.

It’s been an exciting, satisfying, and frustrating journey because, you know, with the first movie, a lot of people perceived us as doing a remake of the original movie—which we love and admire—and complained about that.

Then doing the second movie, which is sort of the bridge in the story, the second act of the big long arc, and then finally getting to the final chapter now and being able to pay everything off and show the audience: this is what we wanted to do.
This is why we went through all this—to show you where we wanted to get.

So it’s super satisfying, but it’s definitely been a challenging journey.

Jeff:
It’s really hard to talk about the movie without giving everything away because this is essentially the cherry on top.
It completes what we’ve seen in parts one and two.

All the questions are answered, the story is wrapped—but potentially left open. Who knows?
You’ll have to see the movie to find out.

Were you afraid going into a trilogy like this of having what I call the Halloween Ends effect?
If you’d been delayed, do you think your timeline and story would’ve changed at all?

Renny:
Definitely.
That was both the blessing and the curse of shooting all three movies together.

It wasn’t your usual sequel structure where years go by and actors and stories change.
From the get-go, our idea was that this is one big four-and-a-half-hour movie broken into three acts, three chapters.

That was the secret sauce.
The frustrating part was that originally the movies were supposed to come out every three months—so in one year, you’d have seen all three.

But technical and distribution issues led to a year-and-a-half gap between the first and second movie, which I think took a lot out of our sails.

So for the final movie, we really wanted to come in strong and show fans it was worth the wait—and also make sure that people who hadn’t seen the previous films could still watch it as a powerful, tense story without homework.

Jeff:
Looking back now, is there anything you would’ve changed or taken out?

Renny:
Definitely.
You learn so much after every movie, and that’s the hard thing about doing three at once.

We didn’t want to rely on the same central idea of faceless strangers committing senseless killings—that would’ve felt lazy.
So we gave backstory, revealed things without ruining the mystery.

We did reshoots as we learned more.
Recently, I put together a supercut of all three films—not just glued together, but re-edited.

We cut about half an hour from the first movie and twenty minutes from the second, rearranged things, and now it plays as one full movie.

My hope is the studio releases it someday—like Tarantino’s The Whole Bloody Affair—so people can see the version I’d love to show as one complete story.

Jeff:
Watching them separately, the first feels eerie, the second more slasher, and the third very psychological.
Does that still come through in the supercut?

Renny:
Even more so.
It’s clearly psychological in the big cut, especially thanks to Madelaine’s performance.

Cutting out extra plot, characters, and filler tightens it and makes it a much more coherent journey for her character.

Jeff:
The movies look big and cinematic.
What was the shooting schedule like?

Renny:
Thank you—that really means a lot.
We shot all three movies in just 53 days—about 18 days per movie—though they overlapped.

Then we did reshoots: about a week for the second movie and nearly three weeks for the third.

It was tight, but no matter what, I always want to give the audience a cinematic experience—something beautiful, epic, and worth seeing on the big screen.

Jeff:
Final question: can we expect more Strangers movies, or are you hanging up the mask?

Renny:
I’d love to do more.
I have ideas for at least three more movies, but it’s up to the audience and the movie gods.

If people want to spend more time in this world, I’m ready.

Jeff:
It’s been a pleasure speaking with you.
Your movies were my go-tos growing up, and I plan to pass them down to my kids.

Keep kicking ass and making brilliant movies.

Renny:
Thank you.
Maybe we’ll talk again soon—I have another movie coming out May 1.

Jeff:
I’ll hold you to it.
Best of luck with the release and the supercut. Thanks for your time.