I have a good friend who's a pretty serious movie buff - his name is Curt. As a matter of fact, I have a few friends that are pretty serious movie buffs - Packy, Shilo (super serious), a few others. But Curt shares me and my wife's passion for old school and well constructed original horror ideas. The thing is, Curt is a little hard on the films most of the time. The wife and I usually search for the entertainment value instead of doing our best to break the films down structurally even though we are screenwriters. All of us have argued the merits and shortcomings of certain post 2000 horror films many times over.
Then comes The Strangers. I loved the premise from seeing the trailer--creepy, suspenseful, okay maybe a classic horror throwback in 2008? Curt loved this movie by the way. While I didn't dislike it, I couldn't help but feel a little robbed of some vital element. Everything was waaaay too easy for the murderers. While its cool to have a couple that is absolutely terrified the whole time, there usually comes a point when that terror turns into anger when the characters' backs are against the wall. The triumph of the human spirit had a very small role in this film. There was no point when the victims actually decided that they were not going out without a fight. These weren't gruesome creatures! These weren't supernatural killers like Jason or Michael Myers! These were two girls and a guy with doll masks and a paper bag over their heads. And for most of the time the two victims were terrified, the killers only had the most basic weapons--- a knife, an axe. Only after the pansy guy in the film gets a shotgun taken from him by a guy with no weapon and a bag on his head do the killers have a firearm. Come on! Seriously? I'm fine with everybody maybe getting killed in the end but the "triumph of the human spirit" factor to create SOME TYPE of difficulty for the killers was noticably absent. Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler were sobbing bags flesh the WHOLE time! Curt I gotta disagree with your assessment of this flick playboy.
Everything else was pretty cool - the masks, the creepy scenes where we see someone in the house early on, the knocking on the door, the summer house in the middle of nowhere, the friend getting his head blown off, the quick build-up to action. But the murderers left the house after re-dressing the victims, tying them up, and stabbing them in the abdomen several times WITHOUT A SINGLE SCRATCH! The film did give you the impression that maybe Liv Tyler's character lived but in my opinion --- she didn't deserve to.
Until next time.
-Sirius
Saw this a few months ago on the bootleg in Jakarta...it was fuckin' hilarious! I'm willing to admit, my husband and I probably laughing at this movie for all the wrong reasons, but what can I say?
ReplyDeleteThey should have left the house as soon as they were approached by the first weird chick that knocked on the door. True to form, though, they acted against doing what any normal person, at least from my community, would have done and got the hell out of dodge. Therefore, I felt free to laugh at any demise they were sure to meet later on in the movie.
I must say, though, I was actually scared by this movie. Unlike eerie movies that have scared the hell out of me like The Ring or The Exorcist, where the antagonist is always some supernatural being (which I, myself, believe in), The Strangers boasted something far scarier than the unseen - good, old-fashioned, flesh-and-blood homicidal maniacs (see LA Santa).
Fools like that definitely exist and are always readily available. Where I'm from, I could take a wrong turn off of I-85 and end up in a setting mimicking the one in this movie. How and why the characters could even have been turned on enough to bump uglies in the mist of their impending deaths was beyond me. Like I said before, though, the plot was the same shit but in a different toilet.
My mother used to CONSTANTLY show me movies like this when I was younger to warn me of the dangerous of having pre-marital sex...I guess she specifically meant pre-marital sex in the woods with a drunk white boy while there are several masked killer's on the loose. That's probably why this movie brought tears to my eyes - tears of hysterical laughter, that is. Ironically enough, I didn't wait for marraiage and lived, but the two fools in the movie were crying over their failed engagement and both got poked to death. I guess Hollywood has just changed the rules on us with regards to who escapes the blade of the cracked-up psycho-killers - when your man proposes to you, say yes or die - you, him and his best friend that'll come to help you - the irony of that alone ought to make for a great laugh.