Madelaine Petsch is done with ‘The Strangers’ after ‘Chapter 3’ — for now

Madelaine Petsch has been on quite a ride with “The Strangers.” 

In the Pacific Northwest-set and Slovakia-shot horror trilogy, Petsch’s Maya has had to battle everything from the sadistic titular trio of masked murderers to an enormous killer boar they send after her out in the woods. However, her long horror nightmare is coming to an end as the reboot of the classic 2008 film, which began with 2024’s “Chapter 1” and continued with last year’s “Chapter 2,” concludes with the final installment, “Chapter 3,” in theaters this week. 

In an interview last month on what she said was her “final day in the world of Maya,” the Port Orchard-born actor reflected on her horror journey and how the series evolved over the past several years.

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“It’s bittersweet. I’m really proud of myself and the world that we’ve created. I hope that people love what we’ve done as much as I love what we’ve done,” Petsch said. “At the same time, I’m going to miss this film and these films and this character and what we’ve built.”  

While she’s sad to see the series come to an end, Petsch said she’s open to doing something similar in the future. Though a challenge, she was glad to have a character like Maya, who finds herself donning the mask in this final part, who she could see the full journey of. 

“It’s funny: I think if you had asked me in the middle of the process, I would tell you absolutely the (expletive) not (would I do something like this again). And now that I’ve done it, what a blessing it is to have the beginning, middle and end of a character arc right in front of me,” Petsch said. “I would absolutely shoot three movies again if it was the right project and it called for it like this one did.”

The project frequently changed over the course of the production, as Petsch said she worked collaboratively with director Renny Harlin to help reshape Maya’s story.

“It always ended the same, but we did a lot of crafting of the character together,” Petsch said. “We were kind of rewriting these movies as we were shooting, which is a little bit of a faux pas in filmmaking, but because I’m the only one in it, it’s OK (laughs). It only really affected me.”  

The changes didn’t stop with rewrites. Following the release of the first film, Harlin told The Hollywood Reporter last year they went back for 28 days of additional photography (“Chapter 3” received three of those weeks) in response to audience feedback. 

“We went and we reshot a lot of stuff for both the subsequent two films,” Petsch said, pointing to one scene early in the first film of the masked killer Scarecrow locking eyes with her character as something they expanded on. “There was something about that moment that felt so charged. … Then as we started editing movie two, we were, like, ‘Wait, there’s this really weird, unspoken chemistry that’s strangely intimate between Maya and Scarecrow, let’s unpack that more in movie three.’ So a lot of the scenes you’re seeing between Maya and Scarecrow, we chose to go and enhance and to make because of that relationship.” 

This shifts the film into being more of a dark romance of sorts, where the cold violence that surrounds Maya starts to become more personal. For Petsch, the way the production unfolded allowed for her to find these moments they might not have otherwise discovered.

“We always knew where it was going to end, but how we got there was surprising to all of us. That was the beauty of having this experience where we could evolve as the movies evolved,” Petsch said. “We are the only other production, I believe, other than ‘The Lord of the Rings’ that shot three films at once under the actors’ union. So you have to use the information that you have to reshape these films as you go on.”

Though much in the film is left pointedly unresolved, including a bit of a cliffhanger, Petsch said the series is something she’s going to step away from to focus on other projects. 

“I think, for now, this is the closing chapter for Maya. I’ll never say never, but I think for my own mental health, I need to walk away and have other experiences,” Petsch said. “Making a film where you’re this psychologically tormented for so many years is troubling and definitely spiked my cortisol.”

While Petsch said she can’t share what projects she’s excited for after “The Strangers,” she hints she won’t be entirely done with horror as “she’s not straying far from this genre.” No matter what she takes on next, she said she still has that same excitement from when she first performed as a kid at the Western Washington Center for the Arts, and that acting is still what she wants to do forever.

‘The Strangers: Chapter 3’
The film opens Feb. 5 at multiple Seattle-area theaters.

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