★★★ out of ★★★★★
The Strangers: Chapter 1 is an extremely faithful reboot of the 2008 thriller of the same name. The film follows nearly beat for beat with the original, which may be a good thing, as the original was a crackerjack scare ride. However, if you are familiar with the first movie, much of the starch is taken out of it. The predictability of the jump scares and the actions diminishes the scariness of it all. If you are new to this story, then game on!
You love ’em. You hate ’em. You don’t know where to start. You worship at their altar. All these things are true. One of the most polemic (and satisfying) devices in the horror genre — shaky cam/found footage flics.
In 2020, at the height of the global pandemic, the braintrust over at Morgan Creek Entertainment, announced — with very minimal fanfare, that they’d be taking a crack at one of the most vaunted franchises of all time — The Exorcist.
To get the Scariest Things Podcast ready for 2023, and potentially the most polemic film in years, we sat down and poured through the entire EXORCIST universe. Some brilliant, some soup-soaked, some awfully-awful, and some filled with the most horrifying images ever put to film.



