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The Strangers
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Blood, bloodier, bloodiest; that must be what the Hollywood studios are thinking after ‘Saw’ and ‘Hostel’ became such a huge success. While ‘Saw’ was the first movie to be coined as a torture porn movie, it was actually ‘Hostel’ that was more likely to fit in that new subgenre. So, in the last years graphic horror movies are becoming more and more popular, with every month a new ‘Saw’/’Hostel’ wannabe.
It is then very delightful to see a horror film that sidesteps bloody escapades and gives us more in the name of suspense. Though I am a gorehound, sometimes you just don’t want movies to be about intestines only. Because gore doesn’t make a movie scary, it is the suspense that has to do it. Gore can backup the suspense factor a little bit if it is done with care, but most horror films from Hollywood now seem to be devoid of suspense.
The premise is simple, rather too simple actually; husband and wife (Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler, respectively) are heading to their remote summerhouse. Then they get watched and stalked around and in their house by some uninvited guests with masks on their heads. This is basically it.
Some of the trademarks of torture porn are movies with very little plot and which is al about, of course, torturing and killing characters in the most creative and bloody ways. Though ‘The Strangers’ doesn’t fit precisely into the torture porn alley, since it lacks a great amount of bloodshed, it also very much lacks a plot. So in some sense ‘The Strangers’ is actually a blueprint for a torture porn flick. Instead of giving us intestines, they give us nail biting intensity. They torture the main characters with this, but also the audience. This movie is above all an endurance test.
Also this movie resembles the little seen French film ‘Ils’ [Them], which was also ‘based on true events’. Though in ‘The Strangers’ nothing really outrageous happens, and could all have happened to a certain extend, the thing is that such a banner put under your film will cause publicity. Sure it might have happened, but it is all speculation. And it doesn’t matter if it all really happened or not, it’s the movie that should be judged.
The opening shots are spherically creepy, but very cliché. We drive by some houses, with the camera fading slowly in and out. It has a kind of ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ atmosphere, which isn’t strange since it’s that particular movie that ‘The Strangers’ is likely to want to live up to. And they partly succeed. There is a lot of good old suspense to be found in the movie, a lot of times this is a play with the characters and the audience. It uses a lot of misdirection to use for the scares and jumps. The makers really handle the material skillfully.
The problem is still, the movie has no real plot. It is all one long suspense stretcher. I admire the makers to go for an extremely serious tone, with no self-referential parody, thank god! Though for some that might be one of the things that are missing. Because the movie is only made up of suspense and scares, it is likely that a part of the audience may get bored after a while. This also applies to the other opposite, where it is becoming too much for people, and thus no real fun. I heard of people walking out because it was too intense, which also happened when I watched it in the theatre. Although you might be mistaken that this is a simple and lazy movie, it just isn’t. The director, Bryan Bertino, is a master in audience manipulation and certainly has done his homework how it should be done; there are a lot of very effective scares and set-pieces. He uses the expectations of the audience to do something else. Or sometimes things exactly happen as you were expecting, only the timing is different, so you still jump out of your seat. So in that way he uses it intelligently. It’s just that there’s really nothing else to it. In the end it is what it is. Which I didn’t mind really, but I can see that a lot of people feel cheated in the end.
The performances of both actors are better than I expected, with Speedman giving an every man performance and Tyler very good when all things go scary. Tyler actually progresses with her performance throughout the movie, the more intense the movie gets, the better her performance.
Though the last scene is completely redundant (and I don’t really hope an invitation for a sequel!), it’s a movie that is mostly about the trip to the end, and not the ending itself. And it really succeeds in giving you a very unpleasant ride.
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