The indomitable Ace at Ace of Spades (see Blogroll) totally scooped me on what I planned to be tonight’s post: my review of The Strangers. Well, no one is reading my blog yet, so I’ll just plow ahead anyway and try to leave out as many duplicative comments as I can.
Everyone who knows me knows that I am a bona fide horror movie nerd: I can’t get enough. Very, very, very few horror movies–even ones that are actually good–ever scare me at all, and the most I can usually hope for is to be creeped the fuck out. The highest compliment I can give a horror movie is to say that it was difficult to watch (i.e., made me squirm). The Strangers managed that quite nicely, so I give it four bloody machetes: the highest rating on my Scale of Scare.
Several things make The Strangers particularly effective:
1) I truly liked the main characters, Kristen and James, and sympathized with them throughout the entire movie (even when they made bad decisions). They’re the only real characters in the film, and you’re right there with them the whole time: you are permitted no distractions from these two people and their predicament. Perhaps the only horror movie I’ve seen where the viewer is truly just an eyewitness to the story, standing invisibly in the room.
2) The director, Bryan Bertino, has the balls to leave out the usual buffoonery that marks horror movies; i.e., bombastic scare-music, frenetic camera cuts, and the ubiquitous Killer Cam. Instead, a profound (and increasingly ominous) sense of silence pervades the film. The atmosphere Bertino created and sustained in The Strangers–which holds even during the most violent scenes–reminds me of Kubrick’s The Shining (that dark, brooding atmosphere was in fact the only thing I liked about The Shining).
3) The “strangers” themselves. The doll masks of the female killers made me roll my eyes in disgust when I saw the trailer (Doll masks? I thought. Honestly.) But the masks ruined nothing. Taunting, merciless, and utterly without empathy. Why did they do what they did? Because Kristen and James were home. Because they enjoyed it. Just because. Brrrr.
4) The shock moments are accomplished with no fanfare or accompaniment, and they are truly unnerving. I think this movie would be almost as scary with the sound off, and when did we ever see that before? The answer is never.
5) The squirm factor. Like I said, this movie was hard to watch, especially at the very end. HARD to watch. I saw it first in the theater, along with a handful of teenagers. Normally the most desensitized and gleefully voyeuristic among us, they could only attempt nervous laughter and obviously insincere jokes when the rough parts hit. They were squirming too, and visibly disturbed.
I won’t go into the minor weaknesses of The Strangers, because they’re minor enough that only a gore snob like me would even notice them (or care). Well, just one: the film was supposedly based on true events-the Keddie murders, a truly horrific quadruple homicide that occurred in northern California in 1981. The Strangers doesn’t resemble the Keddie murders at all. My thought is, why even throw out the “based on a true story” gimmick when your film stands on its own so well? The Strangers doesn’t need any ominous true-life associations: I predict it will grow into a classic, all on its own.
