Speaking at San Diego Comic Con, the team behind The Strangers reveals that the second and third movies went through “enhancements.” The Strangers was originally a 2008 horror movie written and directed by Bryan Bertino. It is now being remade into a trilogy directed by Renny Harlin.

The first movie in that trilogy, The Strangers: Chapter 1, was released last year. The film featured a leading cast including Madelaine Petsch and Froy Gutierrez. Harlin is now preparing for the release of The Strangers: Chapter 2 in September and The Strangers: Chapter 3, with a release date still to come.

In an interview with ScreenRant at SDCC, Petsch, Harlin, and producer Courtney Solomon reflect on the filming process and reveal a key post-production detail. Petsch and Harlin started by talking about the benefits of filming back-to-back. Solomon then chimed in to add that the team “did enhancements for 2 and 3,” shooting over 20 days of new content. Check out the full quotes below:

Madelaine Petsch: Well, I’ll say the beauty of shooting them all three at once was that you don’t get too much outside noise in what you’re doing. You get to kind of live in a bubble. But the other great thing about it is because we sH๏τ them all at once, we could look at outsiders, if we wanted to, and potentially enhance if the movie did well, which it did. It was really interesting to see what people had to say. I think I expected Chapter One to go as it did online, which is that it was a straight remake, obviously, but you can’t really do what we want to do in 2 and 3 without setting up the layers from movie 1. Which we totally expected and we were able to use the information we got from fans to inform our decisions moving forward with 2 and 3 in editing, and enhancement shoots, in a way that I think only made the trilogy and the chapters better and stronger.

Renny Harlin: Yeah, I would say for a director, it was an incredible opportunity to, first of all, shoot them all together, and not shoot one and then wait five years and shoot another one, and everybody has to turn into a completely different person and so on. But really stay in the bubble, because these are not really sequels. This is one long, four-and-a-half hour movie just split into three chapters, and then being offered a chance to be able to enhance the movie. Of course, we are consumers, just like the audience. We watch the movie with them, and we listen to them, and we learn from them, and we learn ourselves when we see the movie put together. To be able to go back and say like, “Okay, let’s emphasize this a little bit. Let’s explore this a little bit.” It’s the greatest gift, the greatest joy to be able to do it.

Courtney Solomon: Absolutely. And now, it’s not officially 52 days anymore. We did enhancements for 2 and 3, so I think it’s somewhere between 75 and 80 now.

What This Means For The Strangers Movies

The First Film Did Not Do Well Among Critics

As the team discusses, there are benefits to filming back to back. Petsch noted that there is “not too much noise” about what the team is doing in this case, and Harlin noted the perks of not having a huge wait time in between.

The Strangers team was in a pickle, however, once the reviews for the movie rolled in. Chapter 1 got a rotten Tomatometer of just 21%, and an audience score that was not that much higher.

One of the movie’s detractors was ScreenRant‘s Rachel LaBonte. In her mixed 5 out of 10-star review of The Strangers, LaBonte noted that it is “more of the same” in terms of plot.

While the first film was by no means a critical darling, it had a much higher 49% Tomatometer. With two more films still down the pike, The Strangers team likely did not want to repeat these mistakes.

Their solution has now been revealed to be these reshoots, or “enhancements” as Solomon kindly put it. With this added footage, the team likely hopes to redeem themselves after the first film’s critical fumble.

Our Take On The Strangers Reshoots

Will These Enhancements Be Enough?

By the time The Strangers: Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 hit theaters, it will be interesting to see how improved they feel from the original. 20 days of reshoots is enough to potentially change some plot points, though it does not seem like they significantly reworked the script.

On the other hand, overhauling it could potentially make The Strangers movies a bit more jumbled than before. Hopefully, Harlin and his team were skillful enough at listening to their audience that they have made positive changes to The Strangers movies.