The Strangers: Movie Review (2008)

Written and directed by Bryan Bertino, 85 minutes, rated R.

For too long, Hollywood has given up on horror movies that deliver real suspense in favor of horror movies that feature something far easier to generate onscreen--graphic violence and torture. And where’s the fun in that?

So, it’s especially nice to have a throwback like “The Strangers” in theaters. In fact, it’s something of a necessity as it might remind younger viewers what they’re missing when they turn out in droves for all those rotten “Saw” and “Hostel” movies.

While the movie stumbles a bit in its rushed, unfortunate ending, what’s admirable is how the film remains committed to delivering mounting tension throughout. It uses time-worn horror movie cliches to fuel the action, true, but it uses them well and in an honest attempt to create a heightened sense of dread.

More often than not, it succeeds.

From first-time writer-director Bryan Bertino, “The Strangers” follows James (Scott Speedman) and Kristen (Liv Tyler), an attractive couple who begin the movie on a bum note when Kristen, off camera, decides she’s not ready for marriage, which James just proposed to her. Her uncertainty about their future has left James in a funk, but his fractured state of mind is nothing considering all that’s to come when they arrive at his parents’ house in the country.

There, where James already had prepared for a festive romantic getaway, complete with rose petals on the floor and champagne on ice, their lives are about to be rocked by a knock on the door. The knock comes at 4 a.m., it turns out to be a young woman whose face is in shadow, and she’s looking for somebody named Tamara. When James and Kristen inform her that nobody is there by that name, let’s just say that all hell breaks loose once the door is shut in her face.

The girl has two friends--a man, a woman--who join her in sporting creepy masks while making it their mission to break into the house and kill James and Kristen by daybreak.

What unfolds is lean, tight and disturbing, a film that intentionally recalls the horror movies of the 1970s, but which also will remind plenty of last year’s “Vacancy.” It’s all about atmosphere and stripping away the clutter to get down to business with low-budget chills. And it comes through. The movie is admirably spare, with Bertino relying heavily on sound effects--usually the hammering, clanking variety, but also via the assistance of an old record player--to provide much of the film’s underlying terror.

It works.

Grade: B