Review of The Strangers (2008) by Timothy B — 16 Apr 2012

The Strangers is easily the most creatively bankrupt film I have seen this year, and, I'm fairly certain, this decade.

It is a long, drawn out exercise in slasher film cliches, and seems delighted to deny us even a moment's uncertainty; each time we hope we don't know exactly what will happen, the film leaves us unfulfilled. I began, at some point after slogging through the first half hour, to attempt to spot the references. By the last half hour, had I not been too disgusted to laugh, I would have been howling at the wholesale theft from the ranks of horror's most classic pictures. Halloween (both versions), Evil Dead 2, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Carrie, Night of the Living Dead, The Hills Have Eyes...and these are just the good ones it borrows from! It shamelessly steals from even such trash as Friday the 13th Part 2, Darkness Falls, and The Tool Box Murders, and (unintentionally?) references the obscure, but great, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon.

Liv Tyler is a lovely woman, and a talented actress. I know that because I have seen her in other films. The Strangers permits her to be neither attractive, nor to create a sympathetic character. As the movie opens she is looking morose. She continues to do so until she starts screaming and cowering in terror...which she does until the end of the film.

Scott Speedman is permitted a couple of moments of brief bewilderment and bravery, and to apparently feel sad at one point...he is otherwise mopey or offscreen entirely.

There is a single other character in the picture. You will know that this person will show up early in the film. You will predict how this person will meet his demise. You will not care, because you don't really remember his name, and he's a stock character from a wedding in any given genre.

I have one positive thing to say about the film: it uses great songs on its soundtrack. They would be effective if the film didn't find a way to deaden the moments using every other thing on the screen and in the soundtrack as the songs play.

The film's most consistent attribute is its ability to sabotage itself at every turn. Consider: the killers have hacked through the front door with an ax. One of them has brandished an ax (we would assume the same ax) menacingly. Why, then, would the characters, and we, be surprised in the least to find that the ax is missing from the shed? Why even bother to point it out? It's as if the filmmakers felt the need to explain where that doggone ax came from. If it's meant to be a shock that it's gone, perhaps we should have a) known there was an ax in the shed at one point, and b) expected it to still be in the shed!

Forget character development, plot, logic, intelligence, filmmaking skill; the filmmakers did. The Strangers believes, mistakenly, that its audience has seen no more horror films than its characters, and delights in dragging us through an increasingly depressing compost heap.

On second thought, compost heap is unfair to the film. It is a garbage pile. This mess will not give rise to anything positive. For many of us, it will likely linger, poisoning our imaginations, festering in our memories, and reminding us with no shortage of bitterness that we actually paid someone for the "privilege" of experiencing this.