I enjoyed it quite a lot, the only reason i wont give it an A is because of the horrible ending but overall its pretty good. I dont see how this is a scary movie but still good enough.

B

After watching it again on DVD, I'd up my rating to an 8/10 (B+).

It's been done a thousand times before, yeah but the newer concepts it used in terms of creeping you out is what sets it apart from previous fiLms aLike (e.g. Vacancy). The ending incLuding that Last shot is what gave the "+" in my grade.

B+

Considering people seem to be mixed on it I'd still recommend renting it first.

It follows the formula and as mentioned the characters act retarded the whole way through, but I was impressed with the feel of it all the same... the acting is quite exceptional in comparison to most horror movies these days, and there seems to be genuine skill in created the horror of the piece. I bought the victims as people and thus the bloodshed had more of an effect on me. I think it's definitely above average for an American horror.

3/5

The more I think about The Strangers, the more I begin to hate it. I didn't hate it because the killers didn't have a motive. I know very little about the horror genre, but I do know that it's been done before (done over and over again actually) and it's been done better. It's not because there isn't a nice little happy ending to give us a smile on our face when we hit stop on the DVD player. Once again, that rarely happens to a viewer after a horror movie. The film isn't about those things.

No. I hated the film because everything is so painfully calculated. Everything is so painfully orchestrated that it led me to believe either two things.

1) The director thinks his audience is made up of a bunch of morons.

(or)

2) The director actually believes he's giving us an experience.

I believe it's the latter. The small problem with that though is that we're given nothing new here. It's the exact opposite of an experience. Everything is so telegraphed and predictable in terms of each character's actions that the film is left to rely on it's suspense factor. It's there, but there's hardly ever a payoff to it (I jumped once). If you were surprised by anything in this film..... Then again, if you have two character's who split up in the middle of a horror film, don't give all of the weapons to one of the character's. Are we really supposed to buy that?

The basic setup for us the viewer is that we're given very little to know about these characters. I thought after the film that it was a big mistake not to have the opening be about 10 minutes longer so that when we're with these characters, we could actually begin to feel a little bit of sympathy for them. Then I realized that's not the goal at all here though, otherwise the film wouldn't be called The Strangers. The filmmakers don't want us to feel any sympathy for Tyler and Speedman's characters. Otherwise, why open with the way the film does? We already know they're going to die (the last shot ruins the whole fucking point of the film though), why should we get attached to them? Without seeing Funny Games (so take what I say here with a bag full of salt here), my guess is that this is the big distinction between the two films. That and this one is slightly more subtle. That film actually tests you as a viewer. Here, we know The Strangers without really knowing them. We know they're there to kill them. We know they're fucking with them. We know that they know every move their prey is going to make. We know that The Strangers are like scientists and that their prey are like little rats in cages. We know, and every single character knows how this is going to turn out.

The film strings you along on a journey. The journey is to make you squirm and watch. I didn't squirm. So what am I left with? Sympathy? That went out the window at the very beginning. Nope, I believe what the film is trying to say is that we're somewhat similar to The Strangers. That could actually very easily be the case if what MadGez said about the director is actually true. We know what's going to happen to these people, but we keep watching anyways. Do we have a motive not similar to the one's that The Strangers have in that we're there to watch people get stabbed and shot to death outside of actually torturing them and doing it ourselves?

It's a nice little trick the filmmakers pulled off here. I watched it. I don't have to like it or appreciate it though.

*

Yes, there's a good chance I could be overthinking this quite a bit, but I do have one question though. What happened to the friend's Jeep? The Volvo was beaten to death and burnt up in flames, but what happened to the Jeep?

Hmm Jmart... were you writing that review before I posted mine? 8 minutes is a quick time to get it all down. Cool coincidence.

Yeah, I was, and yes it is (the cool coincidence part). I noticed yours as I was previewing mine. I think I started to write mine about 15-20 minutes before you posted yours. I just finished watching it about an hour or two to go. I had a friend over and we watched this followed by an episode of The Office and Boston Legal. Once he left I ran up to write my rant. Over that 90 minute span I got to think about the film some more and that's when I really began to hate the film so I had to write something down.

Why you and I both had the desire to do this at 6 in the morning, I have no idea.

I also watched this last night...

I thought it was pretty fucking terrifying. The camerawork is pretty admirably restrained for a first-time feature like this, and yet I thought its constant movement, even if only slight, contributed a lot more to the horror than any stylish cinematography or graphic gore could. The fact that The Strangers themselves stay just out of focus until the very end is incredibly creepy; it's almost as if they're unable to be captured by the camera, as well as by the leads.

I thought the acting was pretty solid. The characters' actions may be illogical, but I didn't really notice and it didn't really bother me. I was too caught up in the action to really care.

That last shot was terrible, though. Totally fucking unneeded and useless.

Still, a pretty solid film in what's been a great year for horror.

Yet another suckfest... Its not an F because for the first 30 minutes or so it is kinda creepy.

http://nevadasagebrush.com/blog/2008/10/28/strangers-strangle-horror-genre/

I'm not defending the movie in anyway. I thought it was a piece of shit. But to answer your questions;

1) Old door to old house. Since the house probably wasn't used that often they probably never felt a need to change the door or to get a peephole.

2) Middle of nowhere - though now I can't remember how close that main road was to the house and if there were any houses on it.

3) From IMDb.com.....



In other words, like many other films since, it tried to do something along the lines of Fargo (and I'm sure Fargo borrowed it from someone else).

The events began around 4am. Do they live in Alaska?

It irritated me that the film tried so hard to not reveal the faces. Why have them take off their masks if you're not going to reveal the killers?

Thankfully the movie was only 80 or so minutes. D.

4/10 -> D

Ouch. Such an awful movie. Both actors are horrible. The plot is - there is no plot actually, just killing (or at least trying to). The killers have no motive. It would be fine if all stayed on playing with the victims and then killing them. But the "Next time it will be easier" sentence completely ruins what the movie was doing for more than an hour. If their goal is killing, if it was hard for any of them to kill, then playing with their pray would be a hard thing too. That wasn't shown. It would actually make for a somewhat original angle if the movie used the reluctance of one of the killers.

And every possible (stupid) hooror cliche is used here. The bitch is barefoot. You know she just has to run into the woods at one point and (because she's barefoot) have a remarkable fall that will make her somewhat crippled. And stuff like that completely annoyed me and I saw it coming from miles away).

I so wanted for them to stab her (Tyler was terrible) that when they stabbed her it didn't feel satisfactory at all. She was that bad. The killers are stabbing her and her reactions are laughable.

Blah. Such an awful horror.

At the ending of the credits there is a disclaimer that all events and characters are fictious and that any similarity to real events/persons is coincidental. So LOL at their claim that it's based on real events.

B+



The Strangers was a great cinematic experience except for one aspect that bothered me afterall - it was not as original as it pretended to be. Say what you will and I know that the filmmakers tries to justify that by saying that The Stranger's script was completed a long time ago....but I can't help, but feel this idea being lifted off the French flick Ils (Them). There are differences in the ending and concerning the explanatory depth of each film, but the basic concept is: a couple is attacked in their home in the middle of the night by some strangers. They terrorize them, stalk them and try to kill them, eventually succeeding. The concept is identical in both films, the difference is that at the end Ils offers some sort of an explanation to the events (a shocking one, though), whereas The Strangers doesn't care to do that.

Another thing the two films have in common, though is that they are incredibly tense. The Strangers even moreso than Them. While it might fail in originality, the flick certainly compensates for that with almost unbearable suspense at some moments. In our day and age of brutal, explicit and violent horror movies (not that there's anything wrong with that kind of horror), it was very interesting to see a movie creating suspense by very very simple, yet incredible effective means. Obviously it's the whole "not knowing what's out there"-aspect that creates its atmosphere. Even in the quite predictable scenes the director manages to create an immense level of suspense. I am talking about the scene in which Mike's best friend arrives at the house. You know someone wrong is going to get shot, but the build-up, especially with the Masked Killer creeping up behind him with an axe is just so suspenseful that it literally kept me at the edge of my seat and probably doubled by heart rate.

After the short introduction, the movie gets to the point pretty quickly. However, after a 30-40 minutes stretch of pure suspense, somewhat of a lull sets in. Then again, I think it's hardly possible for a film like this to actually keep up the tension for the entire running time. From the moment when Liv Tyler runs off to the forest and until she gets back into the house, that's where I thought the movie became somewhat slower, but things certainly pick up again towards the end. I didn't have any problems with the ending that did not answer all of the viewer's questions because this is simply closer to reality in which in a case like this, the killers would not start explaining themselves towards the end before slaughtering the victims.

So looking past the unoriginality as well as a couple of stupid actions on behalf of the victims, the movie was a tight, suspenseful and well-shot horror flick that belongs to the better ones of the last couple of years. Originally my grade was going to be around an A-....but then there was that last shot! You know, that was maybe cool in Carrie, but it certainly isn't anymore. I wish the film had not gone out in a cheap way like this one because the rest of the film certainly deserves better than this. Those 10 seconds single-handedly brought the film down from very good to just pretty good.

Nevertheless, it is still one of the three most tense movies I have seen in 2008.

not as good as its superb trailer suggested, but still one of the better horror flicks you'll find in an age when they almost all suck. It doesn't go for some big tricky gimmick -- it's very straightforward. But even then, it gets quite silly towards the end.

B / B-

Everyone who liked this should watch the French counterpart - Them.

Couldn't agree more. Especially the bolded part was one of the stupidest things they could've done. That they split up didn't create suspense in the slightest. It was just annoying as hell. What a waste of time this film was. D-

A!

Scary as hell.

The Strangers

Thought I reviewed this already. Anyway, I just watched this again after finding it on my laptop hidden away (it's now deleted). It's a good and effective film, but it's not as scary as it could have been. I think they should have done more taunting before going in for the kill, and Liv Tyler's fella is kind of stupid. First, he leaves her alone in the house to go to the barn (yes, the barn; a dark and creepy place where all the killers could be), then he stupidly keeps going outside, and why doesn't he just stay in the bedroom until morning with the shotgun positioned at the entrance?? It would be so simple to survive this ordeal if people used their heads. Also, why do they keep the curtains closed???? It is always best to see your enemy than not know where the hell they might be. It keeps the hunted at an advantage.

The masks are creepy, and the idea is great. I like the fact that he proposed to her and she declined. No need to add this, but it made it better.

B-