Inspired by Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, the Mitchum High School Varsity Charades Team decided to focus their efforts less on getting the right answers and more on intimidating their opponents
The Strangers allows its audience only one instance of relief and, ironically enough, it is the moment when three masked intruders make their first appearance at the cabin door. Before that, tiresome melodrama is the film’s prevailing theme, with James (Scott Speedman) prematurely attempting to betroth Kristen (Liv Tyler), and Kristen turning away his ring. The camera dwells on Kristen sitting in rose petals with her knees drawn to her chest, the couple crying and whispering together, and James eating out of a tub of ice cream because that’s exactly what dudes do when they’re having girl trouble. By the time the unusually insistent knocking starts, the audience is happy that someone else has stepped into the soap bubble these two are in and stopped all of the cloying malaise and stagey weeping. That’s when the axe-related stuff starts — as advertised, as delivered.
Thankfully, the film is truly as jarring and nerve-jangling as it appears to be in its promotional materials. The tormentors are more than mere bush-league Freddies — they are genuinely frightening, as they are not supernatural or otherwise gifted and have no reasonable motive for their campaign of terror. If Kristen had bilked three office coworkers out of rightful lottery pool winnings, or if James was merely contending with a trio of jilted lovers — two female, one male, curiously — the audience would have been comforted by these logical and perhaps common motives for terror and torture. However, as the trailer pointedly notes, these fruitcakes are only doing this because “you were home.” How cold, how crazy, how cruel, and we get the pleasure of watching without the proceedings being dirtied up and stigmatized as torture porn.
Yes, the horror genre is thankfully mutating beyond Hostel and Saw, with this film favoring mind-splitting psychological panic over the actual improvisational dismantling of disbelieving co-eds and befuddled jocks. The result is equally invasive, but psychologically rather than physically, so that those last few among us who haven’t been completely desensitized can still choke down their gourmet theater popping corn from the bottom of the butter vat without retching, at least not due to anything onscreen. Yet oddly enough, the terrors experienced by James and Kristen did keep the bags and straws awfully quiet in the theatre — who could think of food at a time like this?
The Strangers is an entirely straightforward representation of lunatic killjoys axing and knifing innocents, manipulating tear ducts and shrinking scrotums, all maliciously and without cause. The film is notable for rising to the occasion and providing genuine scares. Notwithstanding Liv Tyler bathing (no nudity) in rose petals and Scott Speedman crying into his Haagen-Dazs, this simple movie eschews all of the usual trimmings and trappings, except for those endured by the two leads.
Post the first comment: (Login or Register)