Director: Bryan Bertino
Genre: Horror/
Thriller
Runtime: 90
minutes
Year:
2008
Starring: Liv Tyler,
Scott Speedman, Gemma Ward, Kip Weeks, Laura Margolis, Alex Fisher, Peter
Clayton-Luce, Glenn Howerton
Description: A young
couple (Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman) staying in an isolated vacation home are
terrorized by three unknown assailants.
Review: Home is your
safe haven. There you don’t want to be confronted with worldly problems and certainly
not with strangers. Always lock your doors at night to keep unwelcome callers
outside. But in “The Strangers” it doesn’t keep them out. Director Bryan
Bertino’s exciting and sometimes terrifying horror debut makes domestic terror frighteningly
plausible.
The young couple James and Kristen are about to have a
wonderful night: in a cozy cottage they will spend a romantic evening together.
It all turns out differently. Kristen is very upset about something that
happened earlier that night and they are repeatedly harassed by a strange girl who’s
knocking on their door. The night progresses, but suddenly there is deafening
banging on the door. This heralds the beginning of a horrifying nightmare three
masked strangers are targeting the couple and a bloody game of cat-and-mouse
ensues. Why? Because they were home.
It's a great move by Bertino to leave much of the
story in limbo. Little to nothing is known about James and Kristen’s relationship,
but that they have problems is very clear. An ominous opening act transitions
into a chilling guessing game after fifteen minutes, when the presence of evil
is subtly made palpable. “The Strangers” is at its scariest at these moments:
the threat is intangible, it does not yet have a face. Scary is actyally too
mils a word: the fearful sweat repeatedly breaks out. The fact that the help of
hard violin strokes I called in is not a problem. Few horror films can survive
with images alone and in “The Strangers” the right balance has been found
between sweat and scary moments.
Bertino’s cinematic approach is correct, as well as
the emphasis on anonymous violence, but in the moments when you catch your
breath, the clichés become very obvious. “The Strangers” also invites
frustrated cries at the protagonists.
In summary, “The Strangers” delivers a fantastic
horror experience, but a little too often reverts to the check-off list of
horror conventions.
Rating: 3,5/
5
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten