Review: The Strangers (2008) * *

…and so to my first review. First of all I should point out that there is no particular reason as to the order I review films in. I might have just watched it, just read about it, just been reminded of it or I might, as will be the case for the majority of the time, just feel like it. Also if you are expecting to read reviews only of the latest cooler than cool 'indie' flick or to hear what I think of the whole of the French ‘New Wave’ then you may also be disappointed. Those types of movie will doubtless crop up now and again but you as likely to find yourself reading about Doris Day or ‘The Poseidon Adventure’ as you are Jim Jarmusch or ‘The Red Balloon’.

As far as movie genres go, horror has never been a particular favourite of mine so it was with a certain degree of trepidation that I watched ‘The Strangers’ last night. The story, as you may know, involves a young couple (Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) that leave a friends wedding and travel to spend the night at Speedman’s remote summer home. Whilst there, they are harassed, tormented and assaulted by three masked strangers (Kip Weeks, Gemma Ward and Laura Margolis). That is the sum total of the plot and therein lies the films biggest problem. Nothing really happens. The couple make no real concerted effort to get away from the house and they don’t even come into that much contact with the masked trio. The film consists of a string of scenes involving Tyler or Speedman walking silently around the house to be confronted by one of the three masked figures very suddenly and, as far as the audience I was watching it with are concerned, very shockingly. (My girlfriend spent part of this movie horizontal in her seat and her voice, which she had lost over the weekend, returned miraculously at certain junctures in the form of a scream).

To be fair to Bryan Bertino, who wrote and directed ‘The Strangers’, he has made a film that provides plenty of split-second shocks without resorting to the kind of shock value slashing of ‘Saw’ or the abhorrent ‘Hostel’ However, the film is extremely repetitive and, even worse, derivative. Blank, dead-eyed masks are scary but once one has appeared from nowhere on the screen it is very hard to make the audience jump the next time it happens. This situation crops up about ten times during the film and you always know when it’s going to happen – pretty much every five minutes. Aside from the masks, there are plenty of other clichés (red, scrawled writing appears on the windows, escape is hampered by injury to one of the good-guys). Movies like this rely on disorientation for its scares and, apart from one moment with a stuck record, there is nothing remotely disorientating about ‘The Strangers’ because it’s situations and it protagonists are too familiar from a hundred other movies. Added to the fact there is hardly any dialogue (though given the quality of what there is I should probably call that a plus-point) and the good-guys have much better weapons than the strangers (For fuck’s sake! You have a shotgun, they have one axe between three of them…) I have to say it is a bit dull with a suitably dull denouement.

It is good to see Liv Tyler though. I thought she had dropped off the face of the earth and I always thought she was quite a good actress. I imagine that the similar looking but younger Anne Hathaway gets all the roles once offered to Liv these days. I bet she is gutted she missed out on ‘Get Smart’.


‘The Strangers’ Genealogy

Grandparent: ‘Halloween’ (1978)
Estranged biological father: ‘Funny Games’ (1997)
Annoying, copycat sibling: ‘Eden Lake’ (2008)