The film opens in the woods outside Venus, Oregon, in 2017. A man identified by a missing-person poster later as Jeff Morell flees through the trees, running on uneven ground and tumbling down a slope. Three figures wearing masks--one resembling a scarecrow with a burlap face and hat, a second masked as a retro pin-up girl, and a third with a porcelain doll-like visage--corner Jeff. The scarecrow-masked assailant seizes an axe and swings it down into Jeff's body repeatedly, ending his life in the forest; his body goes still among the leaf litter.

Sometime after, a young couple, Maya and Ryan, drive across the country toward Portland, Oregon. They are celebrating their fifth anniversary and Maya is scheduled for a job interview upon arrival. As they pass through the small town of Venus they stop at a local diner for lunch. At the counter they exchange banter with a server and briefly meet an older couple also marking an anniversary; a conversation at the table turns to the fact that Ryan has not yet proposed, and he dodges that direct question. While they are in the diner, the camera registers a missing-person poster on a wall--Jeff Morell's face and the word "Missing"--but Maya and Ryan do not at first register the significance.

When they try to continue their trip, the car refuses to start. A mechanic in town named Rudy says he can repair the vehicle but only by the following morning. Rudy advises them to take a place to sleep in the meantime and a waitress from the diner named Shelly offers to drive them to an isolated Airbnb cabin in the woods that she manages. Shelly escorts them and drops them at the rental; she leaves after warning them about a few local oddities and promising Rudy will fix the vehicle.

Maya and Ryan unpack and settle into the cabin's quiet. The house contains a piano, a kitchen, and a set of bedrooms; Maya sits at the piano and plays. Outside the door, a slight knocking draws Ryan to answer. At the threshold stands a young woman with heavy eye makeup and a vintage dress--the Pin-Up Girl in a mask--who asks in a soft voice whether "Tamara" is home. Ryan and Maya tell her no and the woman retreats into the dusk and walks away. She lingers in the distance, watching, then disappears down the road.

Later, Maya feels she left a shirt in the car; Ryan discovers he forgot his inhaler and decides to go back into town to retrieve it. He borrows a motorcycle kept at the cabin and rides down the dark road through the trees. At Rudy's auto shop he runs into the mechanic and there is a tense moment when Rudy mistakes him for a thief; the misunderstanding clears and Ryan grabs the inhaler and stops at an eatery to pick up food to bring back to Maya. Locals in the diner offer him a beer and ask questions about the couple's travel; Ryan declines and returns to the motorcycle.

While Ryan is gone, Maya stays in the cabin. The same young woman appears again at the front door and repeats the question about Tamara. Inside, Maya goes to take a shower and the power suddenly cuts out. Unseen, a figure wearing the scarecrow mask stands in the darkness outside the bathroom door and watches her. Maya opens the shower curtain, then hears movement in the house. She moves through a hallway and discovers a porcelain doll-like mask propped against a wall--the Dollface mask--then a rustling behind her convinces her to hide in a closet. She crouches among clothes as shadows cross the floor. Ryan returns, panting from the motorcycle ride, and Maya tells him she is frightened. He dismisses her concerns as nerves, referencing that she had smoked earlier, and tries to calm her.

They sit down to eat, and while they are at the table they notice something hanging from the ceiling above the meal: a dead chicken whose throat has been cut so that dark blood slowly drips down onto the couple's plates. The sight shocks them and they move to lock the doors. Moments later, someone outside drives off-road and pounds at the front door; the massive figure in the scarecrow mask starts to break the main entry with an axe. Maya and Ryan scramble to the bedroom and shove furniture to block the door. Scarecrow uses the axe to smash wood and splits the door sufficiently to peer into the room. He stares directly at the couple for a sustained beat before backing away and leaving the porch.

After that brief, silent intimidation, Ryan and Maya decide to arm themselves and search the property for anything that might help them escape. They move cautiously, listening for footsteps. The couple finds a crawlspace under the house and crawl beneath the floorboards to avoid detection when the killers come into the house. While they are under there, Maya catches her hand on a rusty nail and pierces the skin; she stops herself from making noise as she pulls the nail out and tries to stem the bleeding. After the intruders depart, Ryan helps Maya climb out from the crawlspace. They locate a nearby shed where Ryan finds an old shotgun. He loads it and, when Pin-Up Girl and Scarecrow suddenly attack from the yard, he uses the weapon to fend them off and pull Maya to safety.

They attempt to break free from the property and take whatever vehicle they can find. Ryan hears someone on the front porch; he fires the shotgun through the window or door at the sound, believing he has hit the scarecrow-masked attacker. In the light that follows, he rushes outside and discovers a man--Joe, the property owner--collapsed with a bullet wound, dead. Ryan realizes in horror that he has mistakenly shot Joe as the homeowner apparently came to check on the disturbance. Ryan kneels by the body, distraught, while Maya tries to comfort him and urges them to seize Joe's keys and leave immediately.

They jump into Joe's car and try to drive away, but the scarecrow figure attacks with a pickup truck, ramming and T-boning their vehicle in a series of violent impacts. The truck smashes into the side of their car repeatedly, each strike leaving deeper dents and flinging glass. During the struggle Ryan's leg becomes trapped within the crumpled door or under debris from the driver's side; he cannot free himself. With their escape route cut off and the truck blaring headlights and engine, Ryan shouts at Maya to run and tells her she must leave without him. He fires the shotgun at Scarecrow as he approaches, but the shot misses or fails to stop the attacker; Scarecrow retreats back into the treeline. Maya flees into the surrounding woods.

Once in the forest, Maya uses Joe's cell phone--despite poor reception--to call 9-1-1. She gets through to an operator and speaks urgently about the attack, giving the location and requesting police and emergency services. During the call the signal fluctuates and she loses consistent service. While trying to find her way back to the road or to a place where a patrol might arrive, Maya stumbles through brush and then comes upon a ghastly sight: Jeff Morell's corpse, decayed and slumped against a tree. The body is the same as the missing-person photograph they had seen at the diner. Maya recoils in horror. Before she can move away from the body, Dollface materializes in the trees, springing forward and striking her from behind. The masked killer hits Maya and she blacks out.

At the same time, Ryan struggles near the wrecked car and tracks one of the intruders--Pin-Up Girl--who has been moving around the property. He confronts her in a clearing or on a path and holds the shotgun on her, demanding to know where Maya is. Pin-Up Girl responds with mockery, laughter, and taunting; she does not give straightforward answers. As Ryan argues and presses his weapon toward her, Scarecrow emerges suddenly and knocks him from behind with the blunt end of his axe or club, striking Ryan hard enough to render him unconscious.

Maya and Ryan regain consciousness inside the cabin, each bound to separate upright chairs in a sparsely lit room. Their feet are tethered and ropes hold their arms behind them. The three masked figures stand over them: Scarecrow, Pin-Up Girl, and Dollface. The killers move with methodical calm. Knowing time is limited and facing the certainty of their captors, Ryan turns to Maya and, in a breathless moment amid the terror, asks her to marry him. He produces a ring or proposes quietly; Maya sobs an affirmative yes and they clasp hands despite the rope binding them.

Immediately after that fragile exchange, the violence resumes. Pin-Up Girl lifts a knife or a blade and plunges it into Ryan's abdomen or chest. The blade pierces his body and he cries out; his chair tips or is shoved over, and the position of his torso causes blood to fill his mouth. He gasps and then chokes on his own blood as his airway is compromised. Scarecrow then stabs Maya with the same or a different knife, driving the blade into her midsection; after being wounded she is thrown or pushed so that her chair falls and she slumps to the floor. Maya screams and frantically asks the masked attackers why they are doing this. Pin-Up Girl answers with a detached, almost conversational line: "Because you're here." The trio do not offer any other motive or explanation. After the stabbings they depart the room together, leaving the two victims slumped, bleeding, and tied. From outside the house a faint sound of approaching sirens rises as someone farther away notifies authorities or police are already on route from the 9-1-1 call.

The killers do not wait for the police. As the sirens become audible in the distance, Pin-Up Girl, Dollface, and Scarecrow retreat into the woods and leave the property. Emergency vehicles arrive at the scene moments later, lights cutting through the trees, but the masked trio have already vanished into the night.

The final scenes shift to a hospital. Maya lies on a bed, bandaged and in a recovery ward, her wounds treated but visible beneath hospital sheets. Machines beep at her bedside. She regains consciousness slowly, pushing up from the mattress and trying to orient herself in the fluorescent light. As she sits up and surveys the room, she sees the scarecrow-masked attacker lying on a cot or reclining in the chair beside her bed. The figure is close enough that Maya registers the burlap texture and the stitched eyes of the mask. The film does not show a subsequent confrontation in that moment; it ends with the striking, unsettling image of Maya awake in the hospital with Scarecrow present at her bedside.

At the end of The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024), Maya and Ryan are captured by the masked killers, tied to chairs, and stabbed. Ryan dies from his wounds, but Maya survives and wakes up in a hospital bed, setting up her story to continue in the next films of the trilogy.

The ending unfolds with Maya and Ryan, after a harrowing night of terror, being tied to chairs by the three masked assailants known as the Strangers. In their final moments together, Ryan proposes to Maya, and she tearfully accepts. This intimate moment is abruptly shattered when Pin-Up Girl fatally stabs Ryan in the stomach. Scarecrow then knocks Ryan's chair over, leaving him to bleed out and die. Maya, desperate and confused, demands to know why they are being targeted. Pin-Up Girl coldly replies, "Because you're here." Scarecrow then stabs Maya in the stomach and knocks her chair over as well, leaving her seemingly for dead.

As the killers flee, police sirens sound in the distance, signaling that help is near but too late to save Ryan. The scene fades out on this grim note.

The next night, Maya awakens in a hospital bed, battered and seriously injured but alive. As she rises, the film reveals Scarecrow lying beside her, implying that the nightmare is not over and hinting at the continuation of her ordeal in the subsequent chapters of the trilogy.

Thus, Ryan's fate is sealed with his death from the stabbing, while Maya's survival leaves her as the central figure moving forward. The ending emphasizes the brutal and relentless nature of the Strangers and sets up a narrative exploring Maya's trauma and survival in the following films.

Yes, The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024) has a post-credits scene. In this scene, Maya, the protagonist, is shown to have survived the brutal attack and is recuperating in a hospital. The scene takes place during a stormy night, where Maya wakes up and begins to sit up in her hospital bed. She then sees one of the masked killers, known as The Scarecrow, lying in the bed next to her. This chilling moment leaves the audience with a sense of foreboding, suggesting that the terror is not over and setting up the continuation of the story in the upcoming sequels of the trilogy.

The post-credits scene confirms Maya's survival despite the grim ending of the main film, where both she and her boyfriend Ryan are captured and stabbed by the killers. The presence of The Scarecrow in the hospital hints either at a physical threat continuing or a psychological manifestation of Maya's trauma, deepening the horror and suspense for the next chapters.

The three masked assailants are known as Scarecrow, Pin-Up Girl, and Dollface. They are psychopathic strangers who ambush and terrorize the characters, including killing Jeff Morell in the woods and later invading the cabin where Maya and Ryan are staying. Scarecrow is notably violent, wielding an axe, while Pin-Up Girl and Dollface participate in the home invasion and psychological torment of the couple.

Jeff Morell is a businessman who is ambushed in the woods by the three masked strangers--Scarecrow, Dollface, and Pin-Up Girl. Scarecrow kills Jeff with an axe early in the film, and his missing person poster is later seen in the diner where Maya and Ryan stop.

While staying at the secluded Airbnb cabin, a mysterious young woman (Pin-Up Girl) knocks on the front door asking if 'Tamara is home,' which Maya and Ryan dismiss. Later, the strangers escalate their invasion by hanging a dead bird dripping blood on Maya and Ryan, attempting to break down the door with an axe, and eventually attacking them inside the cabin.

During their attempt to escape, Maya accidentally jams a nail into her hand while crawling under the floor, causing her pain and vulnerability. Ryan also accidentally kills the cabin owner when he shows up unexpectedly while they are arming themselves to fight back. Ryan later finds a shotgun to fend off the attackers.

The question 'Is Tamara home?' is a recurring eerie motif used by Pin-Up Girl to unsettle Maya and Ryan. It is a direct replication of a similar scene from the original film, serving as a psychological tactic to create tension and fear, indicating the strangers' intent and their method of stalking or targeting victims.

The 2024 movie The Strangers: Chapter 1 is not family friendly and is rated R for horror violence, language, and brief drug use. It contains scenes typical of home invasion horror films, including tense and suspenseful moments with strangers attempting to break into a home, which can be upsetting for children or sensitive viewers.

Potentially objectionable or upsetting aspects include:

• Horror violence involving home invasion threats and implied physical danger.
• Suspenseful and frightening scenes with strangers knocking on doors, peering through windows, and lurking in shadows.
• Language that is not suitable for children.
• Brief drug use mentioned in the rating.
• The film's atmosphere includes dark, tense, and unsettling moments that may cause anxiety or fear.
• Some scenes involve characters making poor decisions under stress, which might be frustrating or disturbing to watch.

Overall, the film is designed to create suspense and fear, making it inappropriate for children or viewers sensitive to horror violence and tense situations.