SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains light spoilers for The Strangers: Chapter 2. If you have not yet seen the film, proceed at your own risk!
When people think of The Strangers franchise, the principal association is the home invasion subgenre. The series of horror movies is known for featuring a collection of masked killers attacking innocent people while they are in the supposed safety of a home. But that’s what makes The Strangers: Chapter 2 such an unexpected sequel. In addition to shifting more into slasher territory (demanding a lot from star Madelaine Petsch), the film also has a sequence that no fan could see coming: a battle between protagonist Maya and an enraged wild boar.
With The Strangers: Chapter 2 arriving in theaters this weekend – placing fifth in the box office Top 10 – I spoke with Madelaine Petsch early last week about her work on the movie, and one of the subjects we touched on in our conversation concerned the aforementioned animal fight. As you can probably guess, the production didn’t use a real boar, but the actress explained that just heightened the experience and gave her more appreciation for the work of digital artists:
Yeah, I mean, it was crazy. It was super intimidating. I'd never done anything like that before in my life. So walking into it, you know, I was like, ‘How do I even do this?’ And then we had a creature actor in a black suit who was behaving as if he was the boar, and then we VFX him out – which watching that whole process was so impressive. I was blown away by our VFX artists. They're so talented.
The scene in question (which has earned plenty of commentary from Strangers: Chapter 2’s critics) plays out toward the middle of the movie when Petsch’s Maya is on the run alone, injured, and unable to trust anybody in the small town of Venus, Oregon. She is on high alert looking for the attackers that killed her boyfriend/fiancé, but that means she is caught off guard when what ends up threatening her life is a boar that has a very clear intent to maul her.
The sequence demanded both imagination and physical exertion from Madelaine Petsch, but she is apparently one who embraces the opportunity to do difficult work, and it made the experience a valuable one. She continued,
It was hard, but like I said, I love the challenge, so I just jumped in head first and it was really fun. When am I ever gonna get to do something like that again?
Following The Strangers: Chapter 1 from last spring, The Strangers: Chapter 2 is the middle chapter of a trilogy, and just as the subgenre shifted from home invasion to slasher in these two movies, Madelaine Petsch has promised another big change for the conclusion (but whether it will feature anything as bonkers as the boar attack remains a question mark). The Strangers: Chapter 3 does not yet have a release date, but Chapter 2 is now playing in theaters everywhere.
