The Strangers

If you are looking to be scared to death, by all means pick this DVD up. Those who tell you not to watch this at night alone are not kidding, it's one of the most disurbing movies I have ever seen. First of all the cut up sacks on the heads of the Strangers is spookeeyyyy, really the site of them give you like a viseral scare. The movie has holes yes, I mean it's a horror film, they all do, I mean, right?..but really this movie is one that will give you nightmares, sort of like watching, the little girl crawl out of the TV in, The Ring, or the zombies in 28 weeks later, it's the way it's filmed and edited that makes this a real fright. Highly Recomended if you're into this sort of thing, personally, after seeing this, im good on horror films for a while.

Was Charles Manson or his apprentice unseen in the background here? This is one of the best horror films I have seen in years for suspence, tension and sheer terror. I watch 90% horror films and this one stands out. The fact that they use the classic scare process makes the film that much more enjoyable. Gore, although a great factor when done right in horror films doesen't even have to be used here. It's used just not alot, but again it doesen't need it. the atmosphere is enough to scare the crap out of anyone. This awesome film will go next on my list as movies to try and watch alone with the lights off. The fact that this film is based on true happenings makes it even more disturbing. Great job!

There is a scene in John McNaughton's HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1986) in which Henry (Michael Rooker) and his friend Otis (Tom Towles) invade the home of perfect strangers and torture, rape, and kill the occupants. When I first started seeing trailers for Bryan Bertino's THE STRANGERS, I got a strong feeling that the film was going to be little more than a feature-length re-do of that scene from McNaughton's film, only it would be padded out, I feared, with lots of the elements of the so-called torture-porn that is en vogue in contemporary horror cinema. How wonderfully wrong I was.

Instead of another ho-hum, leave-nothing-to-the-imagination torture-porn horror flick, THE STRANGERS is a truly terrifying film that hearkens back to the pre-1980s era of the slasher sub-genre. As it follows a young couple on their return from the wedding of a friend, the film starts out sort of leisurely and ordinary, not even hinting at the horrors to come. The terror comes on slowly, starting with a late-night knock on the door, then escalates through home invasion, vandalism, violence, and murder. However, unlike the relentless graphic bloodletting common to most of today's horror films, THE STRANGERS separates the acts of violence with the types of cat-and-mouse chases and boogeyman-at-the-window shots that made slasher films so much fun back in the day. Not that the film is totally devoid of grue and gore, but the filmmakers avoid the in-your-face viscera that tends to push a lot of recent horror films into the realm of exploitation cinema. With THE STRANGERS, director Bertino and his crew want to scare you; they don't want to make you lose your lunch.

As this film's proverbial final girl, Liv Tyler does an outstanding job donning the mantle of a scream queen. This part is a far cry from her more-famous role of the stoic Arwen the elf in THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, yet she does a very convincing job here generating various degrees of fear and terror.

The DVD from Universal Studios presents THE STRANGERS in both the R-rated theatrical version and a slightly extended Unrated version, and both are in anamorphic widescreen. The 5.1 Surround-sound English audio is pretty good, although the dialogue seems, at times, to be muffled a bit by the ambient sound. DVD extras include two deleted scenes and a making-of featurette.

Although THE STRANGERS didn't slaughter 'em at the box office, it did garner on opening weekend more than double its production budget. Not bad for a taut little thriller that has more in common with 1970s slasher flicks like John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN (1978) than it does with contemporaries like HOSTEL (2005) and HOSTEL: PART II (2007). Which just goes to show that talented filmmakers can still give an audience a good scare without tossing bucket-loads of blood and guts at the camera. And delivering a good old-fashioned scare is what makes THE STRANGERS a refreshing standout among today's mostly stale horror offerings.

I'm at a lost for words as to why so many people didn't enjoy this film by Bryan Bertino. I hate these types of movies, but my roommate's daughter talked us into watching it; and, even knowing what was going to happen, I got caught up in the plot and found myself shouting at the TV, thinking that the two lead characters (Liv Tyler & Scott Speedman)could actually hear my warnings to them. I never do that when I watch a movie, but this film played on suspense and anticipation, rather than outright violence, except at the end, and hooked me line and sinker. It also worked on my innate fears, playing them like a maestro would a violin, causing me to think about buying a .44 Magnum encase stead someone starts knocking on my door in the middle of the night. I think the small group of actors did one-hell-of-a-great job for this low-budget movie, with Liv Tyler carrying a large part of the film on her very skilled shoulders. She and Scott Speedman certainly did a marvelous job at the beginning of the movie in setting up their relationship with each other. These were people I liked and cared about, not wanting to see them hurt or killed. I also liked the fact that you never really see the faces of the killers (except for the girl who was knocking on the front door) though they take off their masks at the end, before doing the dirty deed so that the victims can see who they are.

The writer/director, Bryan Bertino, definitely has talent as a film maker, and I can see a bright career ahead of him in the Hollywood movie industry. He knows how to reel in an audience and to keep them constantly guessing as to the outcome. And, no, I'm not really Bryan Bertino, writing a good review of my film under a fake name. I'm just a movie buff who found myself enjoying The Strangers against all odds, when I actually expected to hate the movie. I have to say that for me, The Strangers was one of those unexpected surprises in film making that don't come along very often. I look forward to seeing Bertino's next movie!

This film has a lot of potential, with a great set-up. But the execution is pathetic. This is about as frightening as an Adam Sandler film. Liv Tyler's lost look and little baby voice hit the ground at irritating and never let up. Every opportunity to be frightening, or even interesting, is fumbled badly. The killers look cool. This would've made a great music video.