The Strangers

The Strangers is a movie that proves well executed simplicity sometimes can be more effective than bombast, blood and things that go boom.

Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman star as Kristen and James – a young couple heading off to what is supposed to be a romantic weekend getaway at a cottage in a sparsely populated area (UH-OH!!!!). Sadly, they lose that loving feeling when the two have a massive fight before arriving, so James can’t hardly wait to get out of there the next morning. However, at 4 AM, a knock on the door changes everything.

Who can it be knocking at their door?

Why are they wearing masks?

The Strangers will not rewrite the horror genre, and clings to a basic formula without any plot development or intellectual complication, but has enough shocks and scares to keep the audience entertained. Writer/director Bryan Bertino wisely takes advantage of a very simple situation and lack of a massive budget to successfully squeeze every bit of tension and fright out of the audience he possibly can. It’s a movie where we constantly are worried about what’s around the corner, behind a door, hiding on the other side of a curtain and more, even if we are amazed at the stupidity of our heroes’ actions (a classic horror movie tactic), and Bertino brilliantly makes us scared of some cheap masks you would only purchase at Halloween-time with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Without much of a plot, and not much desire to explain why the strangers want to attack our heroes, The Strangers, while quickly paced, seems to go around and around and around exiting and re-entering many of the same rooms and situations we have seen before, instead of moving forward with a constant stream of new showdowns. However, Bertino regularly has the madman and madwomen emerging from the shadows in ways that pay off, so it never feels overdone or worn out, especially since he can be a bit of a tease, which makes you wonder what will happen in each instance. This keeps the audience on the edge of their seats, and even made me close my eyes a couple times.

Tyler and Speedman do a good job running, screaming and looking scared, while Bertino could have gone a bit further answering why these people are terrorizing two seemingly innocent people (the whole attack is too well planned to be random, but not explained enough to make us wonder if something happened in the past to make the attackers bear a grudge), but The Strangers is guaranteed to make you scared at least once or twice, no matter how hard you try to be stoic. For most in the audience, you’ll be scared many more times than that, and you don’t need to suffer through a great deal of gratuitous blood and gore.

The Strangers is rated R for violence/terror and language.