Delayed Reaction: The Strangers

Premise: A couple staying in a remote farmhouse are terrorized by three strangers.

 

You know, I'm used to the fact that horror movies have the least reliable RottenTomatoes scores, but it still surprises me to see how often people really mangle the assessment of horror movies. Similar to comedy, it's always going to be a mixed bag based on personal taste. People like different things from horror. Some people hate to be scared at all. Others love to be scared out of their seats. People like me love something that lingers. We have varying violence thresholds. I think the reason for the split opinions about The Strangers has to do with verisimilitude. How much should horror look like real life?

 

A lot of the most successful horror is supernatural. There's distance between what's happening in the movie and what could really happen. People like to be scared but not reminded of what could actually happen to them. When a horror movie moves into the realm of the feasible, that's when they get labeled as sadistic or "torture porn". Critics will basically call the filmmaker sick in the head for wanting to explore something horrible that resembles real life. In other words, exploitation cinema.

 

The Strangers received really mixed reviews when it was released. I notice that the more recent reviews are decidedly more positive though. A lot of the takes I saw when it was released sound like they were written before the reviewer even saw the movie*. Written by people who don't care for this movie as a genre in the first place. It's like reading my Reaction of a Wes Anderson movie. Even when I try to be objective and fair, those Reactions still read as "I don't like what this movie is doing. I guess other people say it's good. I don't see it."

 

*Not actually written, but thoughts formulated before seeing the movie. I've definitely done that. It's hard not to when you don't care about the movie.

 

Personally, I think The Strangers is damn effective. It's a patient movie. I kept seeing it called a slasher movie, which is weird to me. The only death before the end is Scott Speedman's friend and he was killed on accident by Speedman. It's more accurate to call this a home invasion movie. The violence in this is senseless, which in a lot of ways I prefer. Horror is scarier the less I know. I think of my beloved Oculus. That movie tells us all about the history of this mirror, but it never actually explains why it's evil or where it came from. For it to be scary, I just need to know that it's a malevolent force. That's enough. Similarly, all I need to know is that the three Strangers are terrorizing this couple in a very isolated setting. It's not that different than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, except no one gets away in this movie.

 

It makes The Strangers: Prey at Night even more interesting to me too. That makes it a franchise with two movies a decade apart. And the second movie is about The Strangers actually getting killed. If you think about it, that's a Terminator 2-sized switcheroo. The first movie sets up a franchise that could go 8 movies long with people trying and failing to survive against these masked strangers. Instead, they patiently wait for a sequel then upend the equilibrium. The second movie, is the movie most people thought the first movie would be. Then, because of the first movie, people go into the second movie expecting it to be like the first movie. This is a savvy example of staying a step ahead of the audience.

 

That's not to say The Strangers is perfect. Even at under 90 minutes, it sags a little in the middle. Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler respond to the situation reasonably for a long time, but they do eventually make so dumb horror movie decisions that feel like the screenwriter taking a shortcut.

 

In the end though, this is a patient and effectively creepy horror movie. It's shot well and is very claustrophobic. There is absolutely no reason why this should be a Rotten movie. I can understand a middling Metacritic rating, but RottenTomatoes tells me that more critics didn't like this than did. What the hell?

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend