Following the low-budget 1974 horror classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) ushered in the era of the modern slasher film and set the standard for a string of imitators in this horror sub-genre. The cat-and-mouse game between an unreasonable, unsympathetic evil stalking its prey and mercilessly killing became the template for films such as the Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street franchises, along with a string of forgettable films over the past 30 years or so – including The Strangers.
Horror Movies and the Collective Unconscious
The premise of a memorable horror movie taps into the societal zeitgeist by illustrating a collective fear in the form of a monster who terrorizes – and usually kills – the other characters in the movie who represent members of viewing audience; presumably, someone in the audience can identify with a character in the film and empathize with the character's plight.
The Strangers: Summary
Bryan Bertino's minimalist home invasion thriller, The Strangers, attempts to tap the current vein of ordinary folks thrown into a world suddenly turned upside down by villians whose sole motivation is to instill fear and inflict pain for their own pleasure. While the film opens with the claim that it's inspired by true events, it's clear influence is The Last House on the Left. Kristen (Liv Tyler) and James (Scott Speedman) have just left a wedding and are driving in awkward silence to a remote vacation house late at night. It soon becomes apparent that Kristen has spurned James' marriage proposal, foiling his plans for a celebratory evening, complete with rose petals in the bathtub and chilled champagne.
Interrupting a spontaneous tryst on the kitchen table is a knock at the door. A mysterious girl (Dollface) asks for Tamara, but James says she has the wrong house. Soon after the girl wanders off into the shadows James goes out for cigarettes. While he's gone Kristen responds to another knock at the door: the same girl asks, again, for Tamara. The situation quickly escalates, with Kristen being terrorized by three masked strangers. James returns and the couple soon find themselves trapped in the house. After a series of uninspired jolts the couple find themselves tied to chairs and facing their tormentors.
The most chilling moment comes near the end when Kristen asks her captors, "Why are you doing this to us?" "Because you were home", replies Dollface, matter-of-factly. The tone of her reply says that James and Kristen cannot bargain for their lives, that the masked trio were going to stalk and kill whomever was in the house – it just happened to be Kristen and James.
Comments
While the film offers a few chills early on it was difficult to identify with either protagonist because the setup was underdeveloped. There was a threadbare back story to Kristen and James that failed to give the plot its needed arc at the climax; in the end they were simply two unlucky people at the hands of sociopaths. The killers' motivation is irrelevant, and that's what makes them so horrifying; they terrorize for no reason and, so, cannot be negotiated with.
The Strangers is mediocre entertainment, falling short in plot development by not effectively portraying the current, pervasive anxiety of helplessness that is today's monster. The film plays more like a scary carnival ride where, despite the anticlimactic ending, the scares are predictable and forgettable.
Edmund O'Reilly - Originally from New York, Edmund moved to Australia in 2006 and works as the Creative Director at a multimedia agency in North Sydney, ...
