The Strangers (2008)
Monday, June 23rd, 2008
Directed by: Bryan Bertino
Written By: Bryan Bertino
Cast: Liv Tyler, & Scott Speedman
Runtime: 90 min.
Rating: R
Trailer
For a while, Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers eschews the showy spectacle typical of recent horror films and settles instead for the effective, time-honored practice of sinister atmosphere and mounting suspense. The film works because it understands the significance of withholding information to create tension, and that what is not known is more frightening than what is known. The film is eerily similar in plot and economical sensibility to last year’s Vacancy and the more recent, condescending Funny Games, but what makes The Strangers more effective is its total disregard for narrative causality and explanation. The eponymous strangers, wearing grotesque masks as disguises, are never given any motivation or back-story for their existence. Bertino, a first time writer-director, takes the old school approach of keeping secret the killers’ back-story, motivations and, ultimately, their humanity, thus denying the audience a chance for some sort of rationalizing for the horror that takes place to a couple during the course of one night in their isolated home.
Ultimately, a film purporting itself to be in the horror genre must scare, and thankfully The Strangers succeeds. The scares are built up as a series of stops and starts, a crescendo of paranoia, fear and unease that never lets up until the final minutes of the film. The film is assembled with minimal stylistic tropes; simple scenes with James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) or Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler) investigating noises or evading the strangers are rendered even more frightening because of the claustrophobic effect the cinematography has on the setting. Shot in a style that flattens and blurs the background, a single movement of character in the background feels closer and more threatening to the person in the foreground. This style is utilized to full effect during the film’s best scare, which occurs with the introduction of one of the strangers – the one wearing what appears to be a potato sack over his head – and it works because of nothing more than simple blocking of action and camera placement. For me, however, the best moment in the film comes not from any piece of macabre bloodletting, but from a single line of dialogue. After finding a shotgun in the house to use for protection, James admits not knowing how to load or fire it but only pretended to in order to impress Kristen when they were first dating. James’s unfortunate confession cuts deeper than any knife wound could and helps add a level of dread that no stranger in a mask could ever generate.
Richard X
© Cinephile Magazine, 2008
