The Strangers Written and directed by Bryan Bertino Starring Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler Classification: NA Rating:
When a stranger calls in a horror movie, most likely a night of terror and bloodshed will befall the one who answers. In The Strangers, the chilling feature writing and directing debut of Texas native Bryan Bertino, a loud knock on a heavy wooden front door is what sets the film's events in motion.
The night isn't young. It's 4 in the morning when James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) arrives at his family's isolated summer home with his girlfriend, Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler), after attending a friend's wedding. He has strewn rose petals around the place and chilled the champagne. But his plans for romance are dashed before the couple even walk through the door - and not because some psycho killer in a hockey mask jumps out at them from the bushes wielding a chainsaw.
A welcome break from the supernatural curses and, particularly, the "torture porn" that have dominated the horror scene in recent years, The Strangers, although set in 2005, harks back to a gentler era of terror movies. To get us in the mood, the Hoyt summer home is a sprawling 1970s ranch-style dwelling decorated with dark wooden furniture, appropriately tacky knick-knacks and a portable record player. And the film itself has excellent retro moments - a vinyl record repeating a crackling phrase of girly folk at high volume during a scene of heightened suspense and scary words scrawled in red (is it blood?). But we're getting ahead of ourselves here.
Both Speedman and Tyler deliver solid, nuanced performances as a couple caught at the most fragile moment in their relationship. During the wonderfully drawn-out opening act, we learn in flashback that James proposed to Kristen at the friend's wedding and she turned him down because she's not ready. Their mutual, mostly unspoken awkwardness and sadness reveal great caring. What is their future? Will they stay together or break up?
Their immediate future, however, is a short but intense experience of sheer, inexplicable terror. When they answer the loud knock, they find a waifish female, her face hidden in shadow, who asks, "Is Tamara here?" then walks off. Harmless, except for the disturbing fact it is 4 a.m. James goes to buy cigarettes for Kristen, and her private introspection is interrupted by strange exterior noises, then shattered by glimpses of a masked figure. By the time James returns, Kristen is a mess, clutching a knife and cowering in a corner, yet very little has actually happened.
The secret to a good horror movie is the set-up, and Bertino (who studied cinematography in Austin then worked as a gaffer on indie films in Los Angeles while writing this screenplay) gives us plenty of reasons to care what happens to the couple. He keeps the premise simple (the trio of masked people, the titular strangers, choose the couple as their victims just because they're home), the bloodshed to a minimum and the time frame realistically short - starting the story at 4 a.m. means sunrise is only a couple of hours away. The film builds slowly yet remains tight and well-paced, its 77 minutes feeling just right.
The Strangers reminds us that the best, most frightening horror movies don't make us cringe in anticipation of extreme pain and blood spatter but rather make us terrified of what's lurking just outside the window or around the corner in a setting as mundane as the one next door.
Special to The Globe and Mail