Outsiders: Chapter 3 Review – Pointless Remake Trilogy Ends in Failure | film

IIf you’re wondering how this horror series got this far, Renny Harlin is filming all three back-to-back in Bratislava in late 2022; The reshoots came after the indifferent response to the first chapter in 2024, which did little to mitigate the indifferent response to last year’s chapter two. We get it whether we want it or not: modest resources have been expended, and so we now come to the final blows that constitute the year’s most obligatory carnage. The mistake is to expand a morally bleak world that would have been better self-sufficient; The more light Harlin and his collaborators allow, the more their setup appears as generic escapism, hopelessly out of place amid the recent horror renaissance.

We’re deep into the Outsiders lore now, but last girl standing Maya (Riverdale alumna Madelaine Petsch, who was certainly hoping this was her Neve Campbell moment) continues to dart into the devout woodland community like a bloodstained field mouse with a resting iPhone face; The masked killers—formerly three, now two—have gained ulterior motives for pursuing her. Also present: tattooed survivor Gregory (Gabriel Basso, hoping for more) and the ever-elusive Sheriff Rutter (Richard Brake), whose connection to the killers is finally clarified. New blood arrives in the form of Maya’s sister Debbie (Hollyoaks graduate and recent Oscar winner Rachel Shenton) who comes to town in search of answers, only to be drawn into another round of stalking and monotonous slashing.

Somewhere in the background is the unnerving (and not untimely) idea that an all-American society tolerates killers in its midst so long as they prey on outsiders. However, Harlin ties up his loose ends in a distinctive and literal way, with a scene pacing that might seem like an archaic Wes Craven screamo; A full 30 minutes of pause barely shake the suspicion that there isn’t enough plot at play for a trilogy. The 2008 original will likely remain a solid, sleep-ready example of American distress cinema, but this final chapter, like its immediate predecessors, falls somewhere between footnote and outright detritus, like a plastic bag being blown across the cinema complex in a stiff breeze.