Film Reviews

The Strangers

• Rating:
• Director: Bryan Bertino
• Starring: Liv Tyler
• Details: US / 85mins (16).

The Strangers is very similar to Them (Ils), the 2006 French horror that saw a couple, living in a secluded house, terrorised by unseen assailants for no reason whatsoever. Debutant director Bertino (who also wrote the script) throws in a little of Haneke's home invasion thriller Funny Games with the visual panache of The Orphanage for added effect. However, where Them kept the bad guys off screen for as long as possible, using only sound to scare the bejaysis out of us and wring every ounce of tension out of the story, the home invaders here are introduced far too early and as a result The Strangers, having dealt its best hand prematurely, sags in the middle and has nowhere to go.
Kristen (Tyler) and James (Speedman) arrive at his parents' secluded summerhouse on the verge of a break up, but before they can get into it there is a loud knocking on the front door. It's a teenage girl who seems lost and James sends her on her way. She does indeed go away but later returns with two masked friends...

Although The Strangers has a few decent scares (all in the trailer it must be noted) and comes in at a welcome 85 minutes, Bertino's reliance on the horror cliché roll call prove its undoing: mobiles are put out of action early doors (one is stolen, the other burned); unfathomable character actions (Kristen crawls out to the garden, then back into the house, then outside again, then back into the house; James leaving Kristen alone not once but twice); and everyone's favourite - the old first you see them, then you don't. Do sociopaths really plan out their terrorising tactics this meticulously? "Hey, here's an idea - when the woman looks out the window, you be standing there all spooky, like, but when she gets yer man to check, you disappear." "I like it. How about he doesn't believe her but then sees my breath on the glass?" "Brilliant. Don't forget to give the swings a push before you go." "Done and done." The Strangers has enough nice touches, however, to render Bertino a promising talent.

Review by Gavin Burke