[on film]

Unsettling Suspense:
The Strangers welcomes back the old-school thriller

By: Anghus Houvouras

It’s rare that a movie comes out of nowhere and smacks me upside my head. So many films are horribly over-hyped for months (sometimes years) that audiences almost feel exhausted by the time they reach the theater. Readers have probably already seen most of the good bits in the trailers, so by the time they see the film it rarely lives up to its expectations. That’s what makes The Strangers so damn compelling.

Make no mistake: This is a scary movie, the kind of scary movie they made back in the 1970s that sent chills up audiences’ spines with nothing more than a madman on the loose with an axe. Scary films used to be scary. Now they’re, for the most part, PG-13 bores that possess fewer chills than a summer on the equator. At some point I knew some film would grab the legacy laid down by the Jasons, the Mike Myers and the nameless psychos chopping innocent victims to bits in the films that fueled the fevered dreams of my youth. The Strangers is that movie.

The home-invasion scenario is one that plays into some of our oldest fears—that someone creeps up to our house in the middle of the night, and for no good reason wants to slaughter anyone inside. It was this kind of lurking paranoia that helped fuel a generation of films based on grisly murders and blood-spattered linoleum floors. There’s only the hint of a story before the insane scenario begins to play out in The Strangers, wielding three masked psychos against a young couple staying at a cabin in the middle of nowhere. This film excels on practically every level and is the surprise of the summer season.

We meet James (Scott Speedman) and Kristen (Liv Tyler), a young couple in town for a friend’s wedding. The night hasn’t been a success for either as they are in the aftermath of a botched proposal.

What should have been a romantic evening has turned into the break-up from hell. There’s a fair amount of attention paid to laying the foundation of this fractured relationship. Like everything else in the film, it’s played with a subtle, deft touch that never makes it feel unnecessary. Just when I thought the movie was about to turn into a two-hour relationship analysis, there’s a knock at the door. Once the door is opened, horrific encounters are set in motion, in a brutal and psychological assault on them both.

What works so well about The Strangers is the efficiency that the director, Bryan Benito, brings to the film. He uses space incredibly well, making a small rural house a tinderbox of spooky corners and dark hallways. The killers barely say a word, not relying on cheesy dialogue or quick-fire edits to sell the terror. Instead, we barely get a glimpse of the masked crazies at first. Audiences will see them standing in the corner, peering out from behind an obstruction, out of focus in the deep background. Although they hardly utter a word, we can sense intelligence among them. While the victims may be random, there is a sick science to their methods, almost as if they are playing a well-calculated game.

A lot of what audiences will see in The Strangers is well-covered territory. There are no new tricks coming out of the bag. At times it almost feels like an exercise in terror, taking the most simple of scary stories and seeing just how effective it can be. It’s claustrophobic, unsettling, and it drags our heroes through the wringer. This is my favorite kind of film, the kind that doesn’t believe in, nor has a place for, happy endings. I wish more filmmakers had this level of devotion. It validates the theory that the size of the budget isn’t nearly as important as the passion for making an entertaining, nail-biter of a film. So many horror films have been low-rate Asian imports phoned in by music video directors unable to hold a shot for longer than a 10th of a second.

By the time all three killers corner our hapless heroes, there is little they can do but endure the brutality about to be unleashed. And while the ending isn’t completely predictable, I gather 99 percent will see it coming a mile away. Yet, it’s amazing how utterly inconsequential the fates of the characters play into my feelings of the final product. Sure, it was nice to give the characters a smidgen of a story before masked violence breaks out.

Of course there will be those who will gripe because the killers were given no back-story or explanation for their insane killing sprees. To me, that’s the brilliance of The Strangers. Because audiences know nothing about them, because there is no motive or logic to their actions, they become terrifyingly real. This could be anyone: This could be you readers, in your houses, or apartments, or hotels, hearing a noises that you think is nothing—but what if it isn’t?

I can’t say enough good things about The Strangers. Most assuredly it is style over substance, but it’s a highly effective scary movie with great goosebump-raising moments and scares that will have audiences jumping out of their seats and screaming like 12-year-old girls at a Chris Brown concert.