High on eerie atmosphere and ceaseless tension and low on strong performances or a satisfying conclusion, “The Strangers” is a terrifying yet unsubstantial horror film.

Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman star as Kristen and James, a couple whose relationship has taken a dramatic negative turn.

Spending an awkward, bitter night at James’s parents’ house, the two are disrupted by an abrupt knock at the door. From there, James and Kristen are terrorized and hunted down by three mysterious assailants in masks.

The story does not develop much farther than that, but the bread and butter of this movie is the tension as the protagonists are trying to avoid their attackers, as well as the shock of the appearance of the masked menaces.

The masked, ambiguous appearances of the attackers are truly frightening, and aid in creating panic at their sudden appearances.

The film thrives on the feeling of panic and terror evoked as the main characters realize they are increasingly trapped and helpless. Although frightening, the methods used to scare the audience are often little more than cheap jump-scares.

The complexity of the horror seen here is barely a step above men in masks jumping out and yelling “ooga booga!”

The cast of the movie is extremely small. Beyond the two victims and three attackers, there are only a handful of supporting cast members. The film hinges on the performances
of Tyler and Speedman, and both fail to invoke empathy in the audience. Both play terrified quite well, but flounder in the film’s quieter moments, and thus do not manage to flesh out their characters beyond being hapless, dopey victims.

Even the constant buildup of tension, the film’s strongest element, flounders at the end. Instead of delivering on the
buildup, the conclusion more or less dissipates the tension,
and turns more in the direction of a snuff film than the cat-and-mouse horror that was displayed throughout the previous hour.

At a brisk 76 minutes, “The Strangers” still manages to drag at times, but is an effective and well-constructed jump-fest
that plays its shock value for all it is worth. Those desperate for a scare in the sea of summer action flicks will likely be appeased. Just do not expect anything world-changing or high-brow from “The Strangers.”

-Brad Canze
3 stars out of 5

———————————————–
By Frank Wisswell

“The Strangers” will make you happy to go home to loud but harmless neighbors and noisy streets.

The film starts with Kristen (Liv Tyler) and James (Scott Speedman), a couple on their way back from a wedding, sharing a car ride to a summer cottage in a secluded area.

Kristen is crying and in a completely unexpected and uncharacteristic flashback scene, we see that Kristen has just turned down James’s offer for marriage. Now, the couple are forced to spend one last awkward night together in the house, which James had jerryrigged for romance with rose petals, champagne and ice cream.

Luckily, they don’t have to sit around being awkward for long as a polite knock on the door soon leads to something far more sinister.

Unlike most horror movies, “The Strangers” doesn’t get the majority of its scares from a well-written plot or terrifying performances.

Tyler is forced to play a very complicated role in the first 20 minutes, unfortunately, she doesn’t seem up to the task, as most of her acting comes off as too cold or almost robotic.

The Strangers are led by “The Man in the Mask” (just ask IMDB, I am not making this up), who should be sued by both John Carpenter and WWE superstar Kane for character infringement.

He’s slow and stalking with a few exceptions and he even does the creepy “cock my head with a mask on” move that Michael Myers and Kane brought to the big screen and the wrestling ring respectively.

Australian model Gemma Ward is the only intruder who speaks in the movie, Dollface. She seems to capture their sense of disconnectedness with the violence around them, delivering all her lines as if she was on a cavalcade of prescription medications.

The real scares in this movie come from the tension created by director Bryan Bertino and the subtle, creepy score by duo Tomandandy.

The movie uses silence to its advantage, not only in the intruders’ creepy lack of dialogue but also to set up for big moments. The first time Kristen and James hear a knock on the door, the entire theatre jumps and when they play the same trick ten minutes later, we all fall for it again.

The movie also relies on the audience knowing what’s going to happen. In a particularly tense scene, Kristen changes while listening to Joanna Newsom’s sickeningly sweet gardening anthem “The Sprout and The Bean”, the scene drags on for over two minutes before the audience finally gets the payoff.

Ultimately, this film suffers from the same problems other horror movies suffer from.

While the villains seem almost superhuman (despite how quiet the movie is, they can never be heard scampering around and they have a habit of disappearing and reappearing), Kristen and James come off as so idiotic they are unlikeable in a few scenes.

It seems unclear whether or not his film has a message. While the killers seem to be bored teenagers, the movie doesn’t yell “those darn kids”.

With the film’s title card claiming the FBI estimates there are over a million violent crimes in America a year, the film seems to be “tsk-tsk”ing pointless violence while at the same time showing it to us in frightening detail.

-Frank Wisswell
3 stars out of 5

E-mail the author: defaultuser