Is The Strangers: Chapter 1 Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot

Carol's Diner does not do hospitality

In 2017, Jeff Morell, a businessman, walks into an ambush in the woods outside the small town of Venus, Oregon. Three masked people are waiting for him: Scarecrow, Dollface and Pin-Up Girl, and Scarecrow is the one who uses the axe. Later on, Maya has a job interview in Portland, so she and her boyfriend Ryan drive cross-country, marking five years together along the way. They stop at Carol's Diner in Venus, where several locals are openly hostile to them. A missing persons poster for Jeff hangs in the diner. When their car refuses to start, the mechanic, Rudy, says the repair will be done by morning. Shelly, a friendly waitress, drives the couple to a secluded cabin in the woods that they can stay in overnight.

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Tamara is not home, and nobody asked for her

Once Maya and Ryan settle in, a young woman, who is Pin-Up Girl, knocks at the door and asks whether Tamara is home. The couple brush her off. Ryan realizes he left his inhaler in the car, so he takes the cabin's motorcycle back into town to get it. Alone in the house, Maya hears the same question at the door a second time. She decides a shower will help her relax, and while she showers Scarecrow silently watches her. The power then goes out, and while looking for a fuse box Maya runs into Dollface and hides in an upstairs closet. Ryan comes back and puts it down to a hallucination, since Maya smoked marijuana earlier. Outside, they see Pin-Up Girl watching from a distance, and Ryan chases her off.

A dead chicken joins them for dinner

At dinner, Maya and Ryan spot a chicken hanging from the ceiling with a slit throat. The three masked people then break in, and the couple barricade themselves in a bedroom until Scarecrow smashes through the door with his axe, stares at them and leaves. Their attempt to escape on the motorcycle ends when Scarecrow blows it up. They hide in the house's crawl space, where Maya stabs her hand on a nail, and later find a shed, where Ryan picks up a shotgun and saves Maya from Pin-Up Girl and Scarecrow. Leaving the shed, Ryan hears footsteps on the porch and fires, and he has shot Joe, who owns the property. Scarecrow rams their escape car with his truck, and when Ryan's leg is trapped he tells Maya to run. Maya hides in the woods and calls 9-1-1 on Joe's phone, and she finds Jeff's body while she is on the line. Dollface knocks her out and drags her off, and Scarecrow knocks Ryan out too.

Tied to two chairs in a rented cabin

Near the end, Maya and Ryan wake up bound to chairs inside the cabin. In their last moments together, Ryan proposes, and Maya tearfully says yes. Pin-Up Girl then stabs Ryan in the stomach, and Scarecrow knocks his chair over and leaves him to bleed out. Maya asks why they are doing this, and Pin-Up Girl answers, "Because you're here." Scarecrow stabs Maya in the stomach as well and tips her chair over. Police sirens sound in the distance, and the three masked people leave the scene. This is the scene people brace for, and it comes near the end.