I fell in love with the sound of this film, but not the film itself.
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"The Strangers" writer and director Bryan Bertino worked as a gaffer in Hollywood before gaining recognition for his horror story script which is supposedly based on true events. While the transpired events was centered around a stranger knocking on his door as a youth and the murderous elements purported to be based upon the Manson family murders, "The Strangers" is an inventive little comedy that can be applauded for tinkering with the horror genre and providing a mildly amusing film on a relatively limited budget of roughly nine million dollars. While I dare call "The Strangers" a good film, Bertino shows hints of talent in his freshmen turn as film director as the former electrician moves away from gore and tries to inject more terror into his film than horror.
In "The Strangers," nearly forgotten Liv Tyler stars in her highest profile role since the Peter Jackson "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and the decade old "Armageddon" from 1998. Relatively unknown Scott Speedman stars alongside Tyler and masked supporting actors rounds out the thin cast of eight. Tyler´s role is that of Kristen McKay and Speedman portrays her boyfriend James Hoyt. The film´s beginning title card states "On the night of February 11, 2005 Kristen McKay and James Hoyt went to a friend´s wedding reception and then returned to the Hoyt family summer home. The brutal events that took place there are still unknown." This pair of sentences is where ´based upon a true story´ is completely false, but you can´t exactly make a film on the premise of empty houses being robbed.
Providing more detail than the opening moments of the film, "The Strangers" finds Kristen and James coming home on very uneasy terms. Apparently, Kristen rejected James wedding proposal and the two are unsure of how to continue with their relationship. The summer home was adorned and prepared for celebration, but only loneliness, heartbreak and a stranger that comes knocking on the door in the middle of the night looking for somebody that does not live there await James and Kristen. James leaves to take a drive, clear his mind and pick up cigarettes for Kristen. Meanwhile, a trio of masked strangers begins to terrorize Kristen and force her into a state of panic as she waits for James to return to what is no longer a happy home.
The first half of the film is relatively pedestrian and uses the tension between the lead characters to build suspense. Once the mysterious stranger begins to knock on the door, Bertino introduces layers of terror to supplant the tension between the former lovers. "The Strangers" isn´t about gore and death count as a very small number of people actually die in the film. There is some blood here and there, but most of the film´s thrills come from forced point-of-view and the unknowing of what is going to happen next. This is a movie about two people being stalked in an isolated house and being terrorized by three complete strangers who hide their identity behind masks and have no readily apparent motive behind terrorizing the couple.
While "The Strangers" isn´t as minimalist as on-screen action as "The Blair Witch Project," it is nothing like the formulaic horror film we´ve been subjected to over the past dozen years. The antagonists are visible throughout the film, but the audience is not able to fully keep track of their whereabouts. The main characters cannot find sanctity and safety in the ranch home and the late night invaders are shown to have made numerous entries into the house. Kristen and James have no safety and they are unprepared for what is happening to them. There is a lot of running, crawling and slowly evading capture or death and it is this constant attempt at escaping that provides the primary horror element that Bertino considers to be more terror than horror.
All of the crawling and failed escape while three crazed killers are toying with their prey is where the film begins to break down. It is quite apparent that the strangers mean to do harm to the couple. The strangers are shown in the house and in one instance one of the female strangers is shown directly behind a crawling Liv Tyler. Yet, the strangers show absolutely no haste or inclination to end the nightmare of the couple in a timely manner. All of this dilly dallying around becomes tedious and tiresome. Watching somebody slowly crawl away in terror gets mundane and dull after so many minutes on-screen and I found myself just hoping that one of the masked strangers would kill the character of Kristen before I had to endure more of her panic stricken flight to freedom.
"The Strangers" isn´t all bad, but it is far from good. I did find myself feeling some of the tension as the film started to build to the point where the three strangers became a pivotal part of the story. I really didn´t know where the film was going and what was going to unfold and that was unsettling. I didn´t want Kristen to open the door and I hoped James would get back in time to protect the woman who broke his heart. Bertino succeeded in ramping up his story, but once the villains breeched the home´s walls the story took too many missteps. When the chips hit the table and Bertino needed to introduce actual elements of terror to supplant the suspense of the early going, the story began to unravel. It began on the right foot with a nice style, but the substance just wasn´t there. This was Bertino´s first outing and for that I give him a barely passing grade.
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[release]24426[/release]