The Strangers: Chapter 1 ending explained – Director on how it sets up sequel

The three films will form a self-contained trilogy that Harlin hopes will eventually be watched by fans as one epic movie, with the director telling RadioTimes.com: "We'll see who are those diehard fans who are willing to sit in the movie theatre for four and a half hours to watch the whole thing in one go."

The first entry in the trilogy, titled The Strangers: Chapter 1, has just arrived in UK cinemas – and will seem fairly familiar to most viewers in that it sticks pretty closely to the original film.

Once again, there's a young couple (this time played by Riverdale's Madelaine Petsch and Teen Wolf's Froy Gutierrez) who decamp to a secluded cabin, only to find themselves inexplicably targeted by a trio of masked figures whose motives remain completely unclear.

But how does the film end for characters Maya and Ryan? And what does that mean for the next film in the trilogy? Read on to have all that explained by Harlin himself.

Warning - Full spoilers for The Strangers: Chapter 1.

The Strangers: Chapter 1 ending explained – Director on how it sets up sequel

Following a horrendous night of terror – that includes some very gory moments, and even sees Ryan killing a local after mistaking him for one of the assailants – it appears as if both Maya and Ryan's situation is hopeless when they are knocked out and tied to chairs facing the masked strangers before being stabbed and apparently left for dead.

After watching Ryan seemingly succumb to his wounds, Maya blacks out, only to wake up sometime later in a bed. It remains a mystery what exactly happened to her and how she survived, but Harlin promises that this will be explored in the remaining two films.

"What definitely appealed to me [about the project] was not to make a remake, or to make a sequel, but to, like, reimagine this whole premise," he explained during an exclusive interview.

"And having been a huge fan of the original film, I felt like getting a chance to do a four-and-a-half hour exploration of these characters in three movies that directly follow each other – it's basically a story that takes place in five days, and starts with the idea like, OK, in the original movie, what if Liv Tyler lived? What would happen to her [the] next day? How would all this affect her?"

He continued: "And what if the killers when they realised that she didn't die... what if they came after her again? What would happen? How do we, you know, explore her psyche? And also explore the killers and get some answers?

"Not to say that we are just going to nicely explain everything, you know, why are they killers, and where are they doing this. But still, you know, explore them more.

"It was a unique opportunity, maybe [the] first time in the history of cinema, that you can do quite something like this. So that's why I thought this was an opportunity that I couldn't pass by."

Meanwhile, teasing the tone of the next film, Harlin said that each of the chapters would "get more epic as we go".

He explained: "So, the first one is a home invasion movie, then the second one is really like, 'OK, what happens after that? Where does she go? How does she try to survive and get away from these killers? And when the killers realised that she survived, what do they do?'

"So the environments get more epic, her journey gets more epic, the violence gets more epic. And at the same time, we wanted to always keep a sense of reality and that sense of dread and tension there.

"And when I say epic, it doesn't mean necessarily that the events get bigger. Because for these movies, I think it was always very important just to keep it on a level of reality, so that the audience can relate to it.

"It's not like when I'm making an action movie, where it's instinctual to say bigger is better, more is more. Now, it was the opposite. It was sometimes the smallest details were much more frightening than, you know... it's not about blowing up buildings or doing a car chase. It's about keeping it very subjective and real so that the audience feels always like they could be in that situation."

So, it looks like we'll have to wait for the next film – which Harlin envisages will be released in "October or November" – to get our answers.

And given Froy Gutierrez is listed in the cast for the next two films, could Ryan also make a very unlikely comeback, or might he just appear in flashbacks? We'll just have to wait and see...

The Strangers: Chapter 1 is now showing in UK cinemas.

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