Froy Gutierrez is promising horror fans can expect to see him in more installments of The Strangers.
“Well, I can definitely say that you’ll see [Ryan] in the second movie,” Gutierrez, 26, exclusively told Us Weekly about his character’s fate. “For sure.”
The Strangers trilogy notably filmed all three films across a 52-day shoot in Slovakia. As a result, the scenes were shot interchangeably as director Renny Harlin expanded on the world originally introduced in the 2008 home invasion film.
Harlin’s version of The Strangers — with a script written by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland — stars Gutierrez and Madelaine Petsch (Maya) as a couple who drive across the country together to start a new life. When their car breaks down, they are forced to spend the night in an isolated Airbnb home. Maya and Ryan are subsequently terrorized by three murderous masked strangers.
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The first movie ended with both Ryan and Maya being stabbed by Man in the Mask as Dollface and Pin-Up Girl watch on. Ryan appeared to sustain fatal injuries as he bled out in the cabin while, Maya was seen in a hospital in the last scene. Petsch, 29, has already confirmed her involvement in the entire trilogy.
Before the slasher premiered in theaters, Gutierrez opened up about filming the physically taxing scenes.
“All of the running and crawling in and out of windows, we had to do a few times over. And we were out in the wilderness for a lot of it. So there were a lot of physically intensive parts of these movies,” he explained to Us. “It was great on one hand because it really drops you into the character and it very much drops you into the terror of it.”
Gutierrez found some aspects of the experience to be quite spooky, adding, “It’s hard to not be scared when you’re running for your life. So it’s kind of like the body leading the mind a little bit. And I think it was a really good experience actually to get to play around with the physicality of these characters.”
While trying to help keep Maya alive, Ryan went through several injuries including a car crash.
“When Ryan gets the limp and he hurts his ankle,” Gutierrez pointed out. “There were so many intimate and quiet moments and there were also so many big full-body moments where we’re running and using every limb at the same time.”
Gutierrez also highlighted how Ryan’s asthma — and lack of inhaler — escalated the situation. (In a pivotal moment in the movie, Ryan makes a makeshift inhaler from an empty water bottle in the woods while trying not to be overheard by one of the murderers.)
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“It was very much Chekhov’s asthma, right?” the actor joked about the hints presented in the film. “Part of what was so great about Maya and Ryan as a couple is that they’re both changing some tropes in horror films. Maya is so headstrong, stubborn, smart and leads the way often. And Ryan has this vulnerability and he’s a bit of a curmudgeon.”
Gutierrez continued: “But [Ryan] has this sensitivity to him. And when it gets down to it, he’s really good at operating under stress. So we did a lot of work building out the background for both of them. But a lot of it was kind of in our own time. So I just wanted to build Ryan out as a former Boy Scout kind of tech-bro guy.”
The Strangers: Chapter 1 is out in theaters nationwide Friday, May 17.
