It disappoints me, but not necessarily surprises me, to proclaim The Strangers a failed attempt at a film of its well-worn genre. It is made up of almost endless attempts at scaring its audience but succeeds with a very small number of them. It’s very well made for what it is but that isn’t exactly a good thing when what it is is nothing we haven’t seen before, or, for that matter, done a hell of a lot better.
The plot, the little there is of it, is that a young couple has just come back from a wedding to one of their parents’ secluded house. All seems well as they try to have a romantic night (or early morning as the clock would suggest), but soon they start being terrorized by a group of strangers.
If The Strangers was one of the first of the sub-home invasion genre then this would be fantastic. It’s very well made on a technical level, with the cinematography and setting of tone particularly impressive, but that is left virtually forgotten when what we get is something we’ve seen a million times before elsewhere. It’s generic stuff — from its practically non-existent plot to its generic jump scares, the latter being where I only occasionally felt scared in any way. But, for the most part, those jumpy moments weren't really down to skill on the movie’s part but more a natural, human reaction to a loud noise that offends the relevant senses. There’s a difference between well-timed jumps and just loud noise, and sadly The Strangers adds to the plethora of films which pretty much only have the latter to offer.
A lot of what made such a film as REC, that little-seen Spanish horror flick from early this year, so effectively frightening was the building of tension and the prolonging of moments where you think you know when the jumps scares are supposed to happen but they don’t. The Strangers has a similar technique employed within except it takes too long in waiting before things jump out at you. Aside from the painfully long introduction to these characters that are generic as you could imagine (i.e. young couple who are having trouble with their relationship but conveniently so desperately want to reconcile it the moment a threat is introduced) they wait too long before they attempt to scare you with each individual opportunity. For instance, when we finally get a bit of a look at these intruding strangers the title has so very much intrigued us with the film will wait at least a minute too long before they make a loud noise again to try and scare you. So any successful attempt at building tension is killed instantly when the film waits too long to provide the much wanted scares.
Article comments
1 - Zach
I personally thought this movie was frightening and well-thought out at the same time. HollywoodReporter has some great reviews about it. Check it out.