Considering the amount of scary movies that we are forced to sit through in the average year, it’s amazing to think that more don’t try to use realistic situations. We’ve all seen supernatural thrillers that have spooked us, or religiously themed fright fests that only those that adhere to the faith can call realistic. What seems to be used an utter minimum of times are horrors that could take place in your own backyard, ones that manage to provoke terror in concept alone. Seeking to monopolize an under-explored sub-genre, “The Strangers” stabbed its way into theaters last Friday.
The film opens with James (Scott Speedman) and Kristen (Liv Tyler) returning home from a friend’s wedding, all sullen and teary-eyed. James has just proposed to Kristen with an unexpected result, and the two shift awkwardly around the house, trying to pick up the pieces. All of a sudden, there’s a knock at the door, and the two open it to reveal a mysterious-looking girl who asks if someone whom they’ve never met is home. Believing that to be that, they shut the door and go on with their night, but eventually she comes back, things around the house start to go haywire, and before they know it, it’s a full-out attack, headed by the girl, now dawning a baby-doll mask, and her two disguise-clad friends.
First-time director Bryan Bertino shows a remarkable understanding of the horror film aesthetic, letting the anticipation build with 20-plus minutes of back story in front of the scares, utilizing an occasional loud noise to perfection, keeping us on our toes. The film also does a good job of showing the beautiful aspects of nighttime just as often as the scary ones, resulting in an association that makes the film horrifyingly personal. Bertino pulls out all the tricks that he has in the opening, and by the time the film’s namesake shows up, you’re ready to dissolve into a mess of fear.
And a mess is exactly what the viewer becomes, with the music spiking, and things popping out almost exactly where you expect them to, yet still provoking a gasp almost every time. Tyler has a shriek for the ages; it sends chills down your spine every time you hear it (and you hear it a lot), setting the tone for the movie’s paranoid feel. For the first bit of the strangers’ attack, it’s all cat-and-mouse; no action ever really happens, just one scare per three minutes or so. It’s enough to make you a wreck with anxious anticipation.
The problem, however, is that just after the movie has started out so well, playing its cards the right way each and every time, it starts to get content with its methods, and ceases to unveil any new terror. The slow, methodic haunting of the start never goes away, and no matter how hard you want to be, it’s hard to get fooled by the same trick twice (or six or seven times). The disturbing quiet of watching the hunters stand or walk rather than run, so unsettling at first, quickly becomes commonplace, and almost relaxing by the time that the flick is only halfway over. From there, it’s a slow and steady descent into boredom, even the eventual climax earning only a hoe-hum reaction.
“The Strangers” isn’t a full-on bad movie, but it’s certainly more bad than it is good. After a promising start, the movie slowly declines into complete worthlessness, the maddening horror-movie logic of its protagonists proving almost unbearable at points. The fact that the film may as well be taking place at your own home means that it has some real staying power afterward, something that could cause the easily frightened a few sleepless nights. But such terror is a product of the film’s premise, and what it ends up doing with that premise is thoroughly unimpressive.
“The Strangers” is the ultimate shark of a movie; once it stops moving, which it does well within the first hour, there’s no debating that the movie you’re watching just died.