After a while, the suspense starts seeping out of The Strangers, because you realize that's all there's going to be to the movie.
The Strangers (2008)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:142
Fresh:63
Rotten:79
Average Rating:4.9/10
Consensus: The Strangers provides a few scares, but offers little else to distinguish itself from other slasher films.
Runtime: 90 mins
Genre: Horror/Suspense
US Box Office: $52,534,295
Synopsis: For his film debut, director Brian Bertino has crafted a fantastically creepy horror flick based on the very simple premise of strangers who come knocking late at night. Kristen (Liv Tyler) and... For his film debut, director Brian Bertino has crafted a fantastically creepy horror flick based on the very simple premise of strangers who come knocking late at night. Kristen (Liv Tyler) and James (Scott Speedman) have arrived at a secluded vacation home in the woods after attending a friend's wedding. It's four in the morning, and they're both tearful and emotionally exhausted after a disagreement about their relationship. As they awkwardly try to navigate the long night together, they are distracted by the sound of a heavy knock at the door. They open it to find a dazed young woman hidden in the shadows. Assuming she is lost, James sends her away, but Kristen is disturbed by the late-night visit. When James leaves to go on a drive and pick up some cigarettes, Kristen is left alone, and we watch her move through the huge house in a painfully eerie silence, all the while knowing that she is being watched. By the time James returns, Kristen is in hysterics, and together they must face the terrifying fact that they are indeed in grave danger. Both Tyler and Speedman give excellent, understated performances that lend the film a truly frightening edge of realism. The story's simplicity is a refreshing change from over-the-top torture films like SAW, and the violence in the film is minimal, and much of it off camera. THE STRANGERS also lacks any big-budget special effects. You won't find any CGI creatures or armies of zombies. The only monsters depicted here are the very real human kind, which is what leaves you thoroughly spooked and shaken, and ready to push a chair against your own front door. [More]
Starring: Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman, Gemma Ward, Kip Weeks
Starring: Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman, Gemma Ward, Kip Weeks, Laura Margolis, Glenn Howerton, Alex Fisher, Peter Clayton-Luce
Director: Bryan Bertino
Director: Bryan Bertino
Screenwriter: Bryan Bertino
Producer: Doug Davison, Roy Lee, Nathan Kahane
Composer: Tomandandy
Studio: Rogue Pictures
Reviews for The Strangers
The look and feel - cinematography, score, original music and sound design, sets and locations - are rich, textured, layered and sumptuous. But The Strangers, like an adversary wearing a mask, remains impenetrable.
Director Bryan Bertino brings an intimacy to his film that differentiates it from most of the slasher tripe out there, despite a creakily shopworn premise.
The Strangers is nothing fancy, though for a first-timer, Bertino paints a nice claustrophobic picture and knows what to do with the dark.
It sounds stupid enough, and ultimately is, but the director, Bryan Bertino, stages The Strangers' early scenes with spooky panache.
It's an efficiently made, appropriately terrifying film, downright minimalist in approach and all the more horrifying for it. It's so basic it's believable.
It's so gruesomely relentless that the effect is like watching a slo-mo snuff film.
The movie deserves more stars for its bottom-line craft, but all the craft in the world can't redeem its story.
There's nothing remotely new here, but the movie has the taut, queasy feel of an early 70s drive-in shocker: old-fashioned suspense without any guarantee of old-fashioned mercy.
[Director] Bertino has the pretensions of an artist and the indelicacy of a hack. He tries to get under our skin with a pile driver.
Opening against Sex and the City, it's counterprogramming that runs counter to any sane notion of art or entertainment.
Good thing The Strangers isn't actually scary in the least, because then I might really have to off on a rant about how our entertainment overlords are conspiring with our government to keep us timid and afraid.
The Strangers may not be perfect but it's easy to believe that Bertino's next few will be. It's that great a debut.
For inferior horror films to work, they must be populated with characters who act irrationally at best and downright idiotically at worst.
Writer-director Bryan Bertino, making his debut, seems to understand the mechanics of the genre without having the slightest sense as to what do about the content.
This is no splatter movie: spare, suspenseful and brilliantly invested in silence, Bryan Bertino’s debut feature unfolds in a slow crescendo of intimidation.
No one is getting at anything in The Strangers, except the cheapest, ugliest kind of sadistic titillation.
Latest News for The Strangers
August 28, 2008:
Rogue Eager to Meet More Strangers ![]()
Rogue Pictures has greenlighted a sequel to the Liv Tyler horror movie "The Strangers," and hired the original's writer/director, Bryan Bertino, to pen the script. More...
June 05, 2008:
Box Office Guru Preview: Black vs. Sandler in Comedy Showdown
Two big doses of comedy from a pair of Hollywood's funniest men will hit the multiplexes across North America on Friday in a fierce battle for the number one spot. For family... More...
May 29, 2008:
Box Office Guru Preview: Sex in the Multiplex All Weekend Long
This weekend a quartet of New York City gals will try to boot Indiana Jones out of the number one spot at the North American box office as the much-hyped comedy Sex and the City... More...
May 29, 2008:
Critical Consensus: Sex and the City Will Please Fans
This week at the movies, we've got love and commerce (Sex and the City: The Movie, starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall) and romantic getaways gone wrong (The... More...
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