An effectively chilling but mostly off-putting horror offering, Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers plays mostly like Michael Haneke’s Funny Games without the art-film subtext.
It’s a surprisingly minimalist horror film that feels miscast as a major studio offering: a trio of strangers wearing creepy masks terrorize an innocent couple in an isolated vacation home.
That’s all there is to it, no plot or character development, all terror and atmosphere. This won’t be most people’s cup of tea, and I wonder what the point of it is; while it’s effective, should it even exist?
James (Scott Speedman) has just proposed – unsuccessfully – to girlfriend Kristen (Liv Tyler). What was supposed to be a romantic weekend in a rustic, isolated cabin has turned into a rather unpleasant excursion. James calls his friend and asks him to come & bail him out. He and Kristen talk about, well, what is there to talk about? Suddenly – there’s a knock on the door.
They answer to find a young girl asking, simply “Is Tamara home?” In the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night. They tell her she has the wrong house like it might be a common mistake.
By now, the creepy factor is high but, for whatever reason, the characters on the screen don’t seem to be feeling it. James goes into town to get some cigarettes, leaving Liv alone in the house. Things don’t end up well.
First-time director Bertino handles himself surprisingly well, creating and maintaining a chilling atmosphere and overcoming some of the usual horror film clichés. Speedman and (especially) Tyler are good as the terrorized couple. This is one of the scarier mainstream Hollywood films in recent memory.
There’s a genre of movies, I’m not sure what to call them, but they include Last House on the Left, Day of the Woman (I Spit on Your Grave), and recently, David DeFalco’s Chaos. These movies can’t easily be criticized because they accomplish what they set out to do, which is, namely, to repulse us, (and, intentionally or not) to make us question what we are watching as entertainment.
The Strangers is a big-budget version of these movies, and, similarly, I don’t know what to make of it. It’s certainly well-made but I wouldn’t recommend anyone go and see it. At least Funny Games made us think while beating us senselessly with the nihilism.
The Strangers is purportedly ‘based on a true story’, perhaps the same case that inspired the (very) similar French movie Ils (Them). Namely, that of (per IMDb) “an Austrian couple that was murdered by three teenagers in their vacation home in The Czech Republic.” Of course, no records of this ‘true case’ seem to exist. Director Bertino also quotes the Manson Family murders as an inspiration.
2 Responses
One of the most intense and truly unsettling movies from the 2000s. This is Funny Games unpleasant, but without the fourth wall breaking from Haneke. I am shocked that a major American studio released The Strangers, Blumhouse et al certainly aren’t making horror films like this anymore.