Review by Brian Tallerico

The Strangers is the most surprisingly effective thriller of the year to date. While the genre has turned to exploitative junk or gratuitous violence in the last few years, Bryan Bertino's debut film works largely because of what it doesn't do, as much as what it does. It never feels cheap, grotesque, or manipulative, and only in its final act does it succumb to the cliches of the genre that so often sink these movies before the opening credits have even finished rolling. The first two acts of The Strangers are as effective and well-made as anything in the thriller genre over the last few years and that fact couldn’t be more surprising. Considering the extended post-production process (the film shot over a year-and-a-half ago), the previews that made it feel like something we’ve all seen before, the fact that it's a debut, and the less-than-stellar recent resumes of its stars, The Strangers is solid proof that you can never adequately judge a film until you see it.

One of the smartest decisions Bertino makes is to allow the silence to be a major player in this house of horrors. Based on a true story, The Strangers opens with a nearly-silent return to a secluded family home by couple James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) and Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler). James has a bloody hand and Kristen has clearly been crying. The house has been set up for celebration with roses and champagne, but the opposite mood greets it and, immediately, Bertino makes the right decisions as a writer/director. In glimpses we see what went wrong that night, but James and Kristen barely speak, and we never get all the details. Anyone's who's ever been at a relationship crossroad will tell you that silence is more common than the cliched screaming and crying most writers would employ in a scene like this one. The uncomfortable silence is broken by a knock at the door and a girl asking if Tamara is home. It’s 4am and our hero and heroine are practically in the middle of nowhere. From here, the nightmare begins. Until morning, three teenagers in terrifying masks torment James and Kristen, trapping them in their secluded home and pushing them to the edge of sanity.

Spurred largely by the success of the Saw franchise, the trend in horror has been to turn the volume up to eleven in every single way but Bertino takes it back to Hitchcockian basics in The Strangers and, consequently, has actually made a thriller that can get your heart racing without cheap techniques or intense gore. Brilliantly employing a moody score by tomandandy, Bertino allows the audience to feel the tension of James and Kristen freed of screaming, crying, and unbelievable dialogue. He makes a few mistakes that he probably wouldn't have a few films down the road, most notably in a horrible final shot and in not maintaining a single-person perspective. The Strangers is twice the film it ended up as if we only know what either James or Kristen knows at any given moment - putting us in their shoes - and Bertino goes halfway there but can't commit to it. It also sometimes feels like the tormentors are doing things more for the audience in the movie theater than behaving believably but it's a minor complaint considering their effectiveness and the clear inspiration of some of the horror greats like John Carpenter (the lead baddie feels like a distant cousin of Michael Myers).

Positives and negatives aside, as someone who sees hundreds of films a year, many of them ridiculously gory and horror-filled, it's with great surprise that I tell you that The Strangers had me on edge. It's not perfect, but it’s a thriller that should make genre writers and directors realize that there are other ways to get the heart racing, as old-fashioned as they may be.

Rating: THREE BONES

Release Date: May 30th, 2008

Rating: R

Starring: Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler

Director: Bryan Bertino

Writer: Bryan Bertino