The Strangers

It’s like eating a Funny Games USA popsicle – the stick you’re left with is The Strangers. It recycles hackneyed clichés and has an undeveloped plot with absolutely zero catharsis plus major lapses in logic and plausibility. Bryan Bertino doesn’t even know what a shot of a candle with an inclined flame is supposed to convey. This film is worthless in terms of both screenplay and direction. It has nothing to make it memorable, but it’s cleverly marketed with an appealing trailer and a stellar cast. (11/20/2008)

A film exactly to my taste. A couple of likeable (!!!) heroes in a house, a trio of masked strangers near the house (with a bit of luck, those characters have a big chance of starting a good horror franchise), slow pace, thick atmosphere… great, really. The tension can be felt throughout, the direction is more than decent for a debut and the ending in truly chilling. The Strangers can appeal to everyone who enjoyed the French film Them, it actually gives its European sibling a good run for its money. 75% PS: I see that I’m probably the only one who didn’t like the trailers but liked the film proper. :D (08/19/2008)

A relatively sympathetic hour and a half of terror, which probably won't admit its inspiration from the French film Them, but I won't take points away for that. The film deprives itself of them (unnecessarily). The promisingly sketched plot loses steam before the halfway point, only to end up on a miserable flywheel of long-worn clichés, which then culminates in an ending that is a great celebration of correctness. Unfortunately, this also brings down the well-sketched relationship of the main characters, which the director manages with a few shots, and the successful build-up to the "action," when the pounding on the door freezes the blood... it’s too bad because even watching it at midnight with my laptop in bed didn't help. (06/11/2009)

I appreciate the idea of making a horror film for a change, in which people are not being hunted by supernatural freaks, but by ordinary mortals. Along with Liv Tyler's character, however, this was the only thing that ultimately attracted me to The Strangers. The film was boring, I wasn't scared during it, although I like to be scared in horror films, often if I have a reason to be, and the only thing the story made me do was marvel at the stupidity of the screenwriters. One example of idiotic character behavior - the main character's thought process, loosely paraphrased by me: "Gee, look honey, someone's trying to chop through our front door with an axe. Then I'll shoot them from the inside with a shotgun. So what if I punch a huge hole in the door? Maybe he will get scared and run back to the neighbors and kill them for a while." As I said - a waste of an hour and a half (it was still quite long for a short film), during which I just got the urge to watch Peckinpah's perfect Straw Dogs.___P.S. By "Liv Tyler's character" I really don't mean her role.___P.P.S. The only thing that really creeped me out was a terrible country song playing from the record player. Ugh, I'm gonna dream about it, I know it. (03/06/2011)

The Strangers weren't bad at all. If I'd never seen a film with this theme, I'd definitely rate this higher. This way it was just another one of the many similar efforts which, although well-made, didn't offer anything new. It was pretty obvious from the start how the story would turn out. I just didn't expect the evil to be so perfectly depersonalized - I didn't really find out who or why. I guess these questions just weren’t meant to be answered. (04/17/2018)