Movie Review: The Strangers - Page 2

Between now and then, to their shocking dismay, Kristen and James have unexpected company. These guests, who prove to be strangers of the ilk your mother warned you to steer clear of, claim to be looking for someone named Tamara. Answering the knocked-upon door, James reveals there is no one there by that name—“You must have the wrong address.” Turning a quiet night at home on its ear, as the next 60 minutes or so plays out, it’s James and Kristen who prove to have the wrong address. Without so much as the benefit of formal introductions or an exchange of get-to-know-‘ya pleasantries, the triplicate of deranged killers—a thin man with a Leatherface-inspired cloth bag covering his head and face, and two females with porcelain-looking masks atop their faces, proceed to hunt down Kristen and James inside the home’s increasingly unfriendly confines.

The ensuing chaos is exactly what target audiences should expect from the primal kill-or-be-killed genre. Gun shots, knife-wielding, creaking doors, dim shadows, and the obligatory piercing screams are conveyed forward as if being propelled off a factory assembly-line floor that manufactures thrills and chills with a universal cookie-cutter template three shifts a day, seven days a week. Characters are fleshed out—primarily with culinary instruments—to the bounded physical extent that you’d expect in a low budget scare flick.

Performances—Tyler and Speedman do all the “heavy” lifting for the movie’s 85-minute run time—are a notch above average for the genre’s usually substandard range, with production values and South Carolina-based set-pieces rising above the expectations one would expect to see emerging from a $9 million budgeted horror movie.

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Article Author: Louis Boram

Louis Boram is a film reviewer living in North Carolina. To discuss freelance writing contributions related to film reviewing, criticism, and history, he can be reached by email at Digginupdirt@bellsouth.net.

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