Don’t want to burden the front page with yet another review of The Strangers, but for the forumites that don’t visit the less twitch-y more mainstream discussion site http://www.rowthree.com (where my review IS published), read on below:
THE STRANGERS (2008)
For those looking to be entertained by low-key horror films, along the same lines of the 1970s in the United states, there are some small gems out there for those who peer between the cracks of over-hyped do-over slush. The Strangers is one of those films, and I walked away from it quite impressed insofar as the film aims to scare, and it is scary, the film aims to be mean and it is mean. Is it looking to be profound in its cruelty, perhaps not along the lines of early George Romero, Wes Craven or even Bobby Clark, but it is well within the ballpark in the year 2008 when it feels like it has all be done before, and ripe to be done again. In fact, there is a fair bit of confusion going around as to whether or not The Strangers is in fact a remake of the French nail-biter Ils. I do not think it is officially, but this ain’t baseball and there are no proper record-keepers of such things. For all intents and purposes, The Strangers is a spiritual remake of Ils and it goes so far as to raise the bar a little on its foreign counterpart, something Hollywood horror films have seldom been able to do (although one nice little exception is Gore Verbinski’s The Ring which does a number of this better than its Japanese counterpart, even if it doesn’t quite nail the climax quite like Ringu does) The Strangers may get a little over-reliant on sound cues, and in one clear instance telegraphs the outcome of a scene well in advance, but a few points have to be given to it cold, black, nasty little heart, not only for seeing things through to the end (and a gooseflesh nod to De Palma), but exposing children, evangelical innocents, to the horror of needless violence. Usually teenage marketed tempests-in-a-pablum-teacup along the lines of Prom Night remake generally leaves the young-uns out of it. While I’m no fan of the goofy introductory text (appallingly read aloud by Mr. Movie Voice), the terrified voice of a 911 call from a couple of 10 year olds is a nice way to open (and later, close) the picture.
The Strangers even acts a feather soft allegory of the impotence of culture-of-fear America. Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler, the main characters set-up as an unhappy and frustrated couple who are awkwardly stuck in the middle a marriage proposal gone wrong arrive in the wee hours of the fading night into a borrowed cottage estate scattered with the sad luxuries of a failed reach for the evenings joy. Despite the wash of the evening and confusion as to what happens next, they nevertheless exercise a fair amount of due-diligence to the threat, in the form of anonymous pranks, magnified by the isolation of the geography, as it develops. It is hard to talk back to the screen for either of them doing foolish things, because they are both reasonable enough not too (they don’t). Fear does lead to a fair bit of unsure action, and one tragic over-reaction, but the film stays well-grounded and confident in its pacing throughout. And when daylight comes, then where are they? The film wisely maximizes its punch by leaving the both of them still in the quagmire. The bag on the head of one of the antagonists certainly is the faintest echo of 21st century America damned by its own reactions to terrorism. I am not exactly sure what to make of the female majority in the slasher-trio other than to say, that in one way or another, the feminist movement has come along in its own strange way and would be serial murderers have Eileen Wuornos to guide them through the twilight of their bloody virginity. I could be just spinning my wheels here however. Gender issues certainly not being on this films mind.
That The Strangers is pretty lean and mean -serious even- enough that I’m willing to give it some allegorical due. It is a fair stretch ahead of over-produced dreck like 1408 to be sure (note the lack of any required computer trickery in this one). It is not as arch and distant (and angry) as Michael Haneke’s Funny Games US, in fact Haneke was in part attacking this kind of entertainment, but if there has to be a successor to Last House on the Left, we could do a lot worse than The Strangers. Evil, even of the senseless and unfathomable should lurk in the back of the brain during a good slasher film, and it is pulled off here with a fair bit of aplomb (albeit a kind that occasionally mugs for the camera over any sort of realism.
The iconography of the charming dollfaces and sneering scarecrow-esque masks at least lets The Strangers earn its place at the table with some of the slashers of the late 1970s, early 1980s. This one may not quite pack the emotional punch of Spain’s The Orphanage (which curiously shares the central image of the rucksack mask) or the immediacy and 9/11 gut-punch of [*REC], but how weird is it that a little horror film like this could beat the pants of Spielberg’s last film? Really, who saw that one coming?
On a final note, some of the top shelf international fare may have a slight edge on The Strangers, but if America can pump out a few studio horror pictures along the lines of this one as well as last years P2 and Vacancy, small entertainments that retain a measure of Hollywood slick, but still delivering the evil and anxiety, there is some hope for better things to come along in the genre.
