The Strangers (2008) One performance shy of the Modern Answer to Home Invasion Movies (Review)

Is horror, as a conglomerate of sub-genres, scary? Even as a fully signed up fan, I’d have to say no. Monster, both scientific and supernatural, have a distance to them, they don’t dig deep into the part of the subconscious where it becomes impossible to turn off as you can write them off as not of this world. Buried with your vampires, zombies and mad scientists is the home invasion movie. A very real event that can’t be explained away, hence, if you truly want a scary movie, you head for those. During the past 15 years, few home invasion movies have captured the imagination quite as much as Bryan Bertino’s 2008 film, The Strangers, which makes its UK Blu-ray debut courtesy of Second Sight.

The Strangers introduces us to couple Kristen (Liv Tyler) and James (Scott Speedman), heading home after an awkward engagement dinner and back to his family home on the edge of the woods, nice and isolated. James phones his friend to come and pick him up as soon as possible, in the meantime, he goes for a drive to clear his head and she sits alone, listening to music. All is well, the only interruption they’ve had is a strange woman knocking on the door asking for someone who doesn’t live there. After a while of pottering around, alone, Kristen starts hearing noises – knocks on the door, both quiet and booming, which marks the arrival of three silent, masked assailants (the titular strangers) who terrorise the couple, turning the screw bit by bit.

Bertino’s film is held up in such high esteem thanks to its patience, even at the relatively short 90 minutes (or the 92 minutes of the extended edition), the film takes its time. Some of the Strangers stablemates are more concerned with violence, flesh and the sinewy gore – especially those that were birthed out of French Extremity. Bertino, however, values atmosphere and earthy reality above all else. There’s the aforementioned patience, but more so than that is the use of a minimal score by Tom Hajdu and Andy Milburn and naturalistic cinematography. That is to say, all the lighting is natural and given that this takes place in the countryside in the middle of the night, this is a dark movie. The only lighting Bertino has employed is from candles scattered throughout the house and from lamposts down the way. Lighting this way supplements the isolation and the idea that there is no one out there to save Kristen and James.

That nihilism is key in establishing Bertino’s film in a contemporary canon of horror. The titular menaces are absent far more often than they are present, their absence and slasher patented teleporting tighten the screw more and more, escape for Kristen and James seems more and more hopeless. One scene where James’s friend eventually turns up exemplifies this elegantly. And the only words the strangers utter, blankly stating “because you were home” when questioned about why the pair are attacked so relentlessly. All the cards stack up perfectly whereby you’ll be double-checking locks after the credits roll, especially after that perfect final scene.

Judging Bertino’s film as an exercise in creating terror and skin-crawling dread is undoubted – for me, its like the opening scene of When a Stranger Calls (1979) turned into a feature. However, The Strangers is far from faultless. There are two rather major missteps, in fact. The Strangers functions best when there is the threat makes use of the quiet and the isolation to turn the screw, only enacting violence upon their target during fleeting but brutal outbursts. However, there are jump scares, the sort of jump scares where a character appears out of nowhere and someone in the sound design department slams their ham fists onto the nearest keyboard. Yeah, you jump but are also forcibly knocked out of the mind space that the director had been so painstakingly creating. This happens multiple times, its a problem but the film hangs on despite them thanks to the strength of his vision.

The other major problem is Liv Tyler whose poorly pitched performance has a detrimental impact upon the film not too dissimilar to the aforementioned jump scares. Tyler is perfectly fine in the quieter moments, however, the second the film ups the ante and has the strangers close in on her she shrieks at the top of her lungs. Maybe its what some people would naturally do in that situation – delivery is a different matter altogether. Much of the film has a muted score and quietly delivered dialogue. Yet, whenever Tyler is scared she shouts at the top of her lungs, just as the jump scares deflate the tension of the quiet terror her poorly pitched performance also takes the wind out of the sails far too often.

To return to my opening question of whether or not horror movies can be scary, I believe with films like the Strangers that they can. The atmosphere, the dead air and the tension of people just out of sight waiting to terrorise until they finally pull the trigger. These ensure that The Strangers will retain its power in a way that older horror films dont, or, in a way that horror films obsessed with the claret won’t, either. There’s an audience out there for this kind of modernist home invasion but whether or not it can be included in the conversation that so many have thrust upon it, a conversation that includes the strangers among the best horror movies of the past 20 years. That is something I am not quite willing to throw my weight behind.

Second Sight may not be as prolific as they used to be but where their number of releases slowed down, the quality of the releases has gone through the roof. Not only does this release of the Strangers include two cuts – even if the extended cut is only extended in one scene – it also has a mass of interviews to satiate the curious. There are two interviews with director Bryan Bertino, as well as editor Kevin Greutert, one with Liv Tyler, another with the ‘pin-up’ girl Laura Margolis, and the last one with the cast and larger crew. Filling out the extras are deleted scenes and a booklet featuring critic mainstays Anton Bitel & Mary Beth McAndrews. The only thing that could’ve made it better would be a director’s commentary. Put another way, Second Sight is making up for the fact that people have been waiting for the Strangers to make its UK Blu-ray debut for years. And, honestly, you can say fairer than that.

Thanks for reading our review of The Strangers

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