'Strangers' director no stranger to true horror films
By Lindsay Rice, Staff Writer
June 21, 2008 | noon
All too often bloody gore replaces true fear when it comes to modern horror movies, but "The Strangers" puts the gore aside and evokes the raw terror of murder in a realistic and feasible way.
The film is inspired by a combination of actual events from writer and director Bryan Bertino’s encounter with a stranger at his door and subsequent robberies in his neighborhood and the Charles Manson murders that are notoriously known for involving multiple killers and torturous game playing before committing the homicides.
The terrified voice of the 911 call from a young boy opens the film, and the constant reiteration of “there’s blood everywhere” echoes in the audience’s mind as images of knives, blood and rose petals flash across the screen.
Time rewinds and clips of cookie-cutter houses in Anytown, U.S.A., quickly flash by and immediately plant the “it could happen to you” seed in the viewer’s head. Eventually, the summer home of the Hoyt family comes into view, and its close proximity to a seemingly pleasant neighborhood diminishes the rationalization of safety with a neighbors’ nearness.
James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) and Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler) retreat back to James’ vacation house where rose petals cover each room and a romantic candlelit dinner with champagne poured waits for an unusually distraught couple. Viewers quickly learn through flashbacks that Kristen has refused James’ marriage proposal at the wedding reception that they return from in the beginning of the film.
After uncomfortable sadness drives the couple to their separate solaces within the home, James calls his buddy to let him know that things turned out differently than planned and asks for the favor of picking him up as early as possible the next day. Just as the two come together in passionate despair, a knock on the door soon after their 4 a.m. arrival spurs the torture that is about to take place.
A young girl is the source of the powerful knock and after she asks for a girl that does not or has not ever lived in the home, the confused couple sends the girl away. The unspoken sorrow of the situation and the dimly lit romantic setting drives the heartbroken leading man to the store for an escape, despite the bizarre behavior of the late-night knocker.
Needless to say, the fist doomful knock is not the last, and in his absence, Kristen is left alone to fend against the mind games of three masked attackers. Throughout the early hours of the morning, the assailants slowly destroy all communication and transportation to the outside world, and the twisted masked figures slowly drive the couple to insanity.
The vast majority of the movie is stomach-knotting suspense and a constant thinning hope for the fate of desperate duo. The true horror of the film is personified through both the sickness of the killers' slow torture and the complete lack of motives for such torment.
The subtleness of the attack offers a stark contrast to the common thrasher movie encounters, and it creates an eerie and slow progression of mounting terror. Typically scary films commence with an idyllic environment where characters are in high spirits that are promptly destroyed by an axe-murderer of some sort. “The Strangers” does not attempt to set up such unrealistic pretenses, and instead of a happy couple, audience gets two people consumed by sadness who are threatened with the loss of happiness for eternity. This element heightens the audience’s fear because of its plausibility, and it simultaneously establishes the desolate tone of hopelessness that prevails throughout the movie’s entirety.
Both Tyler and Speedman give a convincing performance of probable human reactions to the events that take place as opposed to the stereotypical horror film roles of the damsel in distress who runs up the stairs instead of out the door.
What the film lacked in hype was made up for with its believability and more classic fear-invoking tactics, making the first true horror movie that audiences have seen in a very long time.
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"The Strangers "
Speakeasy Rating: A
Run Time: 107 minutes
MPAA Rating: Rated R for Violence/terror and language.