Shawn's The Strangers Review

2008 Movie #59 - The Strangers

The trailer for this movie has to be easily one of the creepiest trailers I've ever seen. Even hearing it playing in the background while at work would scare the shit out of me. Therefore I was pretty excited about the actual movie itself, hoping that it would at least somewhat deliver on what the trailer promises. Thankfully it does for the most part.

The plot itself is very simple, two people get terrorized one night by three strangers wearing freaky masks. That about sums it all up. However movies like these are never really about the plot, they;re about the scares and this movie delivers pretty well on that. The best part is that unlike many horror movies (*kicks Prom Night in the face*) this one doesn't overly rely on the sudden loud noise scare. There are a couple yes (one near the end feels completely out of place) but they don't take up the bulk of the movie.

No the scares in this movie come mostly from atmosphere and subtlety. It builds a feeling of tension and dread and thats what delivers the scares. The idea that this could happen to you also adds a lot to the fear, although the text at the beginning telling us the history of the real story isn't really needed.

The characters are interesting and for the most part you do root for them to get out of their predicament. They do make some stupid decisions but not nearly as many as we're used to in a horror movie, so I can let them off the hook for that. Plus how the fuck do I know what a person would act like in this same situation so maybe it's all realistic as hell. Hopefully I never have to find that out for sure.

There are a couple of things about the movie that were a little goofy. As I said before a couple of the jump scares feel tacked on and could have been thrown out all together. Also, before they arrived at the house, the three strangers must have spent fucking hours practicing lurking in the background behind a character, and then being gone when that character turns towards them. They must have done that at least 8 or 9 times in this movie and that takes some real skill so kudos to them.

Overall I would recommend this movie. It's getting rarer and rarer that a horror movie is actually pretty scary and it's good to see one that pulls it off. It doesn't really do anything that you haven't seen before, but what it does it does well and that's more than can be said about most horror movies these days.

*** 1/2 /5

PS. It's also fantastic to see an R rated movie, especially a horror one, do really well at the box office. Keep it up World!