THE STRANGERS [R]
review by Padraic Maroney

As children, we asked our parents to check the closet for monsters or look under the bed for anything scary. But once we grow up, we begin to realize that most of the fears we previously had were nothing to worry about and that our homes are one of the safest places. Few movies have successfully been able to breakdown that security wall reducing grown adults to be afraid to go home at night. That was before The Strangers came to town.

In an era filled with J-horror remakes making us think our televisions and cell phones are going to kill us and the so-called “torture porn” that eaves bloodied mutilated carcasses piled up, it’s interesting to see a simplistic horror movie throwback like this dropped in the height of summer. The Strangers has a plot seen plenty of times before – in films like Wait Until Dark, Straw Dogs and recently Funny Games – a couple leaves a party to head out to the country for a weekend, but upon reaching the country home, they are met and terrorized by masked strangers.

Even though it is a well traveled plot, the film seems fresh in that it isn’t trying to scare us by how much blood is thrown around (not a whole heck of a lot) or by the bloody count (one of the smallest in horror movie history, probably). But rather from the beginning, the audience gets sucked in upon meeting the not-so-happy couple played by Live Tyler and Scott Speedman. It’s instantly obvious that something is wrong even before the taunting begins.

Right from the beginning we are told that it is inspired by true events. Not to be confused with the similarly based on true events, which means that the facts have to stay pretty closely to the actual story, the inspired by moniker has become almost a cliché in itself. Without a definitive knowledge of which events and the names of characters being changed, many people on the Internet have been theorizing that the film is drawing from the Manson Family murders. But whereas those infamous killings were more about mayhem and carnage, The Strangers is a cat-and-mouse game filled with tension and suspension and only occasional violence.

First time writer-director Bryan Bertino starts the film with emotional suspense but throws it into overdrive with by adding the physical suspense. Tyler and Speedman aren’t equally matched, nor do they ever seem to fully connect, so its wise that the film quickly shifts from relational angst into other kinds. Bertino sticks by the old Hitchcockian adage of letting the audience know things that the characters in the film aren’t aware of for most of the movie, keeping us on the edge of our seats.

With his first film, Bertino has harkened back to the age of tension-filled horror movies where the killers taunt and terrorize their victims rather than just going in for the kill. His oddly watchable little movie is reminiscent in tone of many modern horror touchstones like When A Stranger Calls and even the opening narration brings to mind the opening of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The movies has a bit of a claustrophobic feel to it, with the close camera angles and the overall lack of space in the house. That claustrophobia actually helps the film to achieve greater results in making the situation even more uneasy. The uneasiness level is taken even higher with a mask that is creepier than anything since the original Scream was released over a decade ago. In fact, the way the masked trio is portrayed throughout the film is what sets the film over the edge. The non-speaking attackers keep their masks firmly on their face until the final moments of the film allowing them to keep the best poker face possible. For some of the film, it’s that ability to not read their minds that keeps you guessing whether they do in fact want to kill the couple or if merely they are just playing a game to see how scared they can make the lovers before mysteriously vanishing.

Never has the end credits of a film been so welcome, merely for the fact that you know there is nothing else left to scare you. Unlike other films where you are racing to get out because the movie was horrible, The Strangers offers the weird sensation of wanting more but not wanting to see anything else. After all, you do have to go home at some point. But once you’ve seen this movie, it’s not monsters you will be checking for anymore. Rather check to make sure there are no masked strangers with axes waiting.•••

Padraic Maroney is a regular contributor to EDGE.