A bit like Funny Games without the scolding, the
minimalist home-invasion thriller The Strangers doesn't take many words to
describe: isolated vacation home. Masked tormenters. Helpless couple. And yet
it's precisely the film's spare, disciplined, back-to-basics horror effects
that lend it a sustaining chill; if the audience knew any more about who "the strangers"
are and why they've chosen this house, this couple, and this night to do their
worst, then a lot of the tension would dissipate. Making a frighteningly
assured debut, writer-director Bryan Bertino understands the fundamentals
thoroughly, and he has the patience to hold back and keep the tension hanging
where a lesser director might have gone for the cheap shock. Many of the film's
shots and scenes go on several beats longer than expected, just to stoke a
near-unbearable feeling of anticipation and dread. As a filmmaker, at least,
Bertino seems to have more in common with the perpetrators than the victims.
It doesn't get much better than the
first couple of reels, which set an ominous mood without having to get too
explicit. Returning late from a wedding, Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman pull into
his family lake house for what was supposed to be a romantic night, but she's
just turned down his marriage proposal. Their tenuous relationship heightens
their vulnerability later when a strange girl pounds on the door at 4 a.m.,
asking for someone who doesn't live there. Slowly and steadily, the situation
escalates: a few more knocks on the door, some disturbances from inside, and
finally, the appearance of masked figures emerging from the shadows.
At no point is there a sense that
the victims have any control over their fate, nor can they even comprehend
what's happening to them, much less negotiate with their attackers. The
Strangers could be
labeled "torture porn," because there's really nothing to it beyond watching
ants squirm under the magnifying glass. The difference is that it's mostly psychological torture porn, and the biggest
dive-under-your-chair moments come from how skillfully Bertino handles his
sadistic cat-and-mouse game. Bertino makes particularly brilliant use of the
widescreen frame, slipping the tormenters in and out of view, preying
mercilessly on his heroes' vulnerability—and ours. It isn't particularly
original—for one, it owes an unacknowledged debt to the French film Them—but as an exercise in
controlled mayhem, horror movies don't get much scarier.