The Strangers

It's the end of October and Halloween is in the air again. The temperature drops, the leaves start to fall and it's the perfect time to shut off the lights, curl up on the couch with a plate full of pumpkin seeds and hot cider and settle in for a marathon of good old fashioned horror movies. Sadly, "good old fashioned horror movies" are in short order these days, as the industry seems to have forgotten what truly makes a movie scary anymore. Then I watched The Strangers.

On the surface, it's easy to pass this movie off as "just another horror movie," but upon closer inspection, it's so much more than that. Produced on what looks like a shoestring budget with only six characters to speak of, The Strangers relies almost solely on mood and atmosphere as opposed to flashy special effects and excessively gory deaths. From the outset, the movie is an uncomfortable journey into fear. The main characters Jamie (Scott Speedman) and Kristen (Liv Tyler) share an inordinate amount of uncomfortable silences before the story actually begins to unfold, setting a sort of base coat of tension in preparation for what's to come.

High marks go to first time writer/director Bryan Bertino on a number of levels. The actors (especially Liv Tyler, who spends a large portion of the movie in front of the camera by herself) handle themselves admirably, reining in more than believable performances. Tactfully placed reveal shots combined with sparse lighting and a very red heavy color palette add to the mood. The fluid narrative and depth of character help to raise The Strangers above typical "torture porn" and transcend the horror genre to an almost psychological level. The violence is sparse and blood kept to a minimum and yet, the film pulls off what gorier incarnations have failed to achieve.

It's obvious that Bertino understands the basic principles of genre film-making (or any kind, for that matter.) In order to create a truly visceral, real and terrifying experience you have to place to viewer in the mindset of the characters, make them feel the tension of the moment as if it were happening to them. This is something that's been missing from horror movies for as long as I've been watching them, and that's the problem. I've only been watching them and not experiencing them as the genre begs them to be. The Strangers is as effective today as John Carpenter's Halloween was in 1978, all the while never bothering itself with cliched serial killer stereotypes. So I welcome the fall season with a shiver in my spine and and a paranoid glance over my shoulder. The Strangers has succeeded where so many others have failed.