The Strangers is a film utterly without redemption - along the lines of ‘torture porn’ movies such as the Saw series and Wolf Creek. Having endured the motiveless terrorizing and torture of a couple who just happen to be ‘home’ when a group of random attackers choose to call, we are left with no hope, not even a deeper ‘point’. The opening of the film refers to some real event which ‘inspires’ the movie, though the makers appear to be unaware what this actually was or unwilling to reveal it. More likely, they don’t care.
The opening is genuinely scary, especially when the girl knocks at the door at 4 in the morning asking for ‘Tamar’ and, when told she’s not there, says plaintively ‘Are you sure?'. When we see one of the attackers suddenly inside the house, on the margins of the frame, while the central Liv Tyler character remains oblivious, it's absolutely terrifying. But from then on the movie has nowhere to go. It seems unsure and indifferent to what the point of all this is, other than – to go by the word of the director on the accompanying DVD Extras – to provide some innovative kind of movie horror experience. But this ambition extends beyond little other than technical innovations such as constructing the house in a vast studio so that the echoes are as loud and spooky as possible.
No, if there is a point it is simply that one’s home can be easily invaded. It thus reminds me of David Hare’s comment that the message underpinning Patricia Highsmith’s fiction is that ‘once you set your mind to it, any one human being can destroy any other’. In The Strangers, when asked by the Liv Tyler character why they do this, the masked intruders reply: ‘Because you were home’. This seems to refer to the victims just happening to be in while the killers were on their random spree. But it also conveys a deeper logic, that being ‘home’, counter to all the conventional connotations of safety and security, is where you are at your most vulnerable. This message is in keeping with the general paranoid tenor of 21st century America. But it's actually something that horror films have taught us more implicitly for decades. Think of the common post-horror-film experience of having your own house transformed suddenly into a location for potential evil as you eye dark spaces nervously and rush past empty rooms on the way to the safety of bed. It's the home that is made strange.
The opening is genuinely scary, especially when the girl knocks at the door at 4 in the morning asking for ‘Tamar’ and, when told she’s not there, says plaintively ‘Are you sure?'. When we see one of the attackers suddenly inside the house, on the margins of the frame, while the central Liv Tyler character remains oblivious, it's absolutely terrifying. But from then on the movie has nowhere to go. It seems unsure and indifferent to what the point of all this is, other than – to go by the word of the director on the accompanying DVD Extras – to provide some innovative kind of movie horror experience. But this ambition extends beyond little other than technical innovations such as constructing the house in a vast studio so that the echoes are as loud and spooky as possible.
No, if there is a point it is simply that one’s home can be easily invaded. It thus reminds me of David Hare’s comment that the message underpinning Patricia Highsmith’s fiction is that ‘once you set your mind to it, any one human being can destroy any other’. In The Strangers, when asked by the Liv Tyler character why they do this, the masked intruders reply: ‘Because you were home’. This seems to refer to the victims just happening to be in while the killers were on their random spree. But it also conveys a deeper logic, that being ‘home’, counter to all the conventional connotations of safety and security, is where you are at your most vulnerable. This message is in keeping with the general paranoid tenor of 21st century America. But it's actually something that horror films have taught us more implicitly for decades. Think of the common post-horror-film experience of having your own house transformed suddenly into a location for potential evil as you eye dark spaces nervously and rush past empty rooms on the way to the safety of bed. It's the home that is made strange.
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