People needed another The Strangers movie like a bag on the head, but Mr. Potato Sack is back in burlap to wreak hessian havoc on a bland new couple.

The Strangers: Chapter 1 opens with titles explaining there are 1.4 million violent crimes in America each year, and “this is the story of one of the most brutal.” It then proceeds to show one of the tamest, most boring murders never committed. A more accurate opening would have been: “There are 60 million couples in America… this is the story of one of the most objectionable.”

The awful couple in question (Madelaine Petsch and Froy Gutierrez) are forced to spend the night at an Airbnb in the woods after their car dies of embarrassment. They quickly contact the owner to come and fix the fridge, despite having no food and planning to leave first thing in the morning, in the vain hope that something might actually happen at some point in the next 80 minutes.

A girl then knocks on the door and keeps asking to speak to someone called Tamara, which she pronounces to rhyme with ‘camera’. They assure her there is no one of that name in the cabin or presumably anywhere in the human world. The man realises he has lost his inhaler and goes back into town on a motorbike that could be put to better use transporting them both somewhere more hospitable, such as a nearby kennel or local abattoir.

Eventually the Strangers from The Strangers movies show up and murder a chicken, having apparently not heard about the fridge being broken. The couple spends the rest of the film (which is almost over by this point) running around like the proverbial, doing so much damage to themselves that the masked home invaders look like they wish they had stayed home and done something more exciting with their evening, such as playing I Spy or revising for their GCSEs.

The Strangers: Chapter One puts the nap in knapsack, bag-headed up by one of the most comical-looking villains this side of Michael Fabricant. His appearance is made funnier next to the other two intruders who get these ornate-looking doll masks, like they ran out of porcelain and just stuck a bag on his head. Apparently his name is actually Scarecrow, although if crows are scared of this man of the cloth then farmers would be better off simply converting all their crop to hemp.

There has also been some confusion over whether the film constitutes a reboot or takes place in the same continuity as the previous movies, with the producers and director (Renny Harlin) offering conflicting reports. Either way the only threatening part of The Strangers: Chapter One is that two more films are in the works.