We got a copy of The Strangers in the mail a couple weeks back to promote the film's DVD release. I hadn't seen it, but I read Brad Steinbacher's review of it, a brief portion of which I'll throw down here:
Sleazy and unsettling, writer-director Bryan Bertinoâs âinspired by true eventsâ tale of a couple being terrorized in their exurban home by three masked boogeymen gets a lot of mileage out of the simple things. Doors are pounded on menacingly; blurred figures creep into frame unbeknownst to the victims. Itâs all admirably restrained and, for the most part, effective.
I tried to contact Brad to ask him if I should watch it, but nobody's seen him since the shit went down in Peru a couple weeks ago. What the hell, I figured, it's almost Halloween, right? And so I watched The Strangers.
Well, it's not Hostel, anyway. There's not a whole lot of torture porn in the movie. As Generalissimo Brad says in his tremendously accurate review, a lot of the scares are of the good old-fashioned "Dumbass-endangers-him/herself-when-under-attack" variety. Unfortunately, both Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman are completely worthless, and the whole movie feels like 2/3rds of a good horror flick. I'm not saying that all the mysteries and ambiguities of the movie need to be resolved, but there needs to be more of the movie than what's just onscreen to make the thing an actual film with real characters. As it is, it's just the longest trailer ever made. I'd avoid this, frankly, because it'll just make you want to watch the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre again, and you can save yourself time by just skipping the middleman.
