Kelly Wand"The Strangers" Review
June 1st 2008 03:39
Watching "The Strangers" really awakened my sense of nostalgia. Not so much for horror classics like "Halloween" and "The Orphanage" but for the last time I got taken in by a cool preview*.
Where "The Mummy" tapped into our fears of Egypt and "The Crush" tapped into our fears of Alicia Silverstone, "The Strangers" taps into something much more frighteningly realistic: our mortal dread of uninvited houseguests with way too much time on their hands.
After the requisite ten-minute preamble in which we learn that our protagonists have issues and are bummed out over something child-related (cf. "The Descent," "Dead Calm," "1408," "Vacancy," "The Orphanage," "Halloween," "The Others," "The Other," "The Omen," "The Omens"), a weird girl comes to Liv Tyler's door and asks if "Tamara [is] there." When Liv Tyler tells her she must have the wrong house, the girl, whose every line reading is pitch-perfect lifeless, responds, "Are you sure?"
What follows is the usual torture-movie scenario already done to more sophisticated, stomach-churning effect in "Funny Games" and to exactly the same witless effect in the "Saw" and "Hostel" movies. The difference, basically, is that Liv Tyler is in this one, being terrified as we've never seen her before, and between her great acting and the creepy body language of the Strangers, you have just enough to make a decent thirty-second TV spot.
The movie's riddled with annoying amateurish flaws, from its film-student shakycam to its film-student inane dialogue to its film-student one-trick-pony-ness. The most common motif is that Liv and her dumbass boyfriend see the strangers, look away for a second to say something or break an ankle, and look up to find...the stranger's GONE! Considering how fond the strangers are of pulling this gag over and over, Liv and her boyfriend are pretty lax about securing the inside of the house, even after the strangers have already broken in repeatedly through means never explained. That's what's kind of boring about the strangers: they're not supernatural but they act supernatural. They seem able to effortlessly control how often they're seen, just as they make a lot of noise and disappear instantly without a trace, even when it would seem they have our victim/heroes finally cornered. Unlike Michael Myers, the movie conjures up imagery of the antagonists tiptoeing uncreepily away in between shots. That's what they'd have to be doing for what happens to make any sense.
There's also a scene about midway in where the good guys totally throw the game, and lose audience sympathy completely. They're well-armed, alert, and entrenched in a reasonably defensible position, and then there's an accidental shooting (an out of left field plot convenience: a "best friend" character who shows up, behaves illogically, and never once calls out until it's too late). And then the characters totally lose their shit, going from having a shotgun against one guy with an axe and two women with knives at best, all wearing masks that should cut down on their perceptual combat strength, to being tied up in chairs and deprived of the will to live. Great horror movies don't need to make sense, it's even better if they shouldn't -- but they do need to operate on a reptilian nightmare logic to scare us, and here there's just no directorial authority or characterization to justify Liv's boyfriend's traumatized "plan" to leave her defenseless and alone in an already breached dwelling and go out into the woods to lose their only good weapon and shot at survival. Characters that dumb have it coming. And fledgling director Bryan Bertino doesn't set these characters up as dumb, or as anything really. All we're given is that the boyfriend lied to Liv about growing up hunting in the woods, an admission he's surprisingly quick to neglect completely.
In the end, the nice building sense of unease in the early scenes and the fact that Bertino obviously had enough game to get Liv Tyler into appearing in a slasher movie make it all the more discouraging that the movie doesn't show you a single thing you haven't seen before, or surprise you even once, or seem to be saying anything about anything (it is to Camus what "Superman Returns" was to Nietzsche). Even the b.s. "true story" text preface is cribbed right from "Texas Chainsaw"; everything in the whole movie feels lifted from something better and scarier. You feel Bertino joylessly jerking your chain throughout, from Liv's sensuous coitus interruptus to the countless camera-angle cheats all the way to the final "reveal." And (spoiler alert) Bertino unforgivably goes out of his way to deny you a glimpse of the other Strangers' faces (which I suppose technically wouldn't make them "strangers" to us anymore). Roger Ebert gave Bertino props for being just a kid, but youth is no excuse for not having a third act.
In the restroom afterwards, two teenage dudes wearing Lakers caps were trading gloomy looks over the sink. "I thought it was going to be something different," one said. To which his companion quoth, "I thought we'd at least get to see their faces."
I suspect they weren't even film students.
*"Stargate"**.
**(Except for James Spader's bravura Goldblum/John Ritter impersonation.)
Where "The Mummy" tapped into our fears of Egypt and "The Crush" tapped into our fears of Alicia Silverstone, "The Strangers" taps into something much more frighteningly realistic: our mortal dread of uninvited houseguests with way too much time on their hands.
After the requisite ten-minute preamble in which we learn that our protagonists have issues and are bummed out over something child-related (cf. "The Descent," "Dead Calm," "1408," "Vacancy," "The Orphanage," "Halloween," "The Others," "The Other," "The Omen," "The Omens"), a weird girl comes to Liv Tyler's door and asks if "Tamara [is] there." When Liv Tyler tells her she must have the wrong house, the girl, whose every line reading is pitch-perfect lifeless, responds, "Are you sure?"
What follows is the usual torture-movie scenario already done to more sophisticated, stomach-churning effect in "Funny Games" and to exactly the same witless effect in the "Saw" and "Hostel" movies. The difference, basically, is that Liv Tyler is in this one, being terrified as we've never seen her before, and between her great acting and the creepy body language of the Strangers, you have just enough to make a decent thirty-second TV spot.
The movie's riddled with annoying amateurish flaws, from its film-student shakycam to its film-student inane dialogue to its film-student one-trick-pony-ness. The most common motif is that Liv and her dumbass boyfriend see the strangers, look away for a second to say something or break an ankle, and look up to find...the stranger's GONE! Considering how fond the strangers are of pulling this gag over and over, Liv and her boyfriend are pretty lax about securing the inside of the house, even after the strangers have already broken in repeatedly through means never explained. That's what's kind of boring about the strangers: they're not supernatural but they act supernatural. They seem able to effortlessly control how often they're seen, just as they make a lot of noise and disappear instantly without a trace, even when it would seem they have our victim/heroes finally cornered. Unlike Michael Myers, the movie conjures up imagery of the antagonists tiptoeing uncreepily away in between shots. That's what they'd have to be doing for what happens to make any sense.
There's also a scene about midway in where the good guys totally throw the game, and lose audience sympathy completely. They're well-armed, alert, and entrenched in a reasonably defensible position, and then there's an accidental shooting (an out of left field plot convenience: a "best friend" character who shows up, behaves illogically, and never once calls out until it's too late). And then the characters totally lose their shit, going from having a shotgun against one guy with an axe and two women with knives at best, all wearing masks that should cut down on their perceptual combat strength, to being tied up in chairs and deprived of the will to live. Great horror movies don't need to make sense, it's even better if they shouldn't -- but they do need to operate on a reptilian nightmare logic to scare us, and here there's just no directorial authority or characterization to justify Liv's boyfriend's traumatized "plan" to leave her defenseless and alone in an already breached dwelling and go out into the woods to lose their only good weapon and shot at survival. Characters that dumb have it coming. And fledgling director Bryan Bertino doesn't set these characters up as dumb, or as anything really. All we're given is that the boyfriend lied to Liv about growing up hunting in the woods, an admission he's surprisingly quick to neglect completely.
In the end, the nice building sense of unease in the early scenes and the fact that Bertino obviously had enough game to get Liv Tyler into appearing in a slasher movie make it all the more discouraging that the movie doesn't show you a single thing you haven't seen before, or surprise you even once, or seem to be saying anything about anything (it is to Camus what "Superman Returns" was to Nietzsche). Even the b.s. "true story" text preface is cribbed right from "Texas Chainsaw"; everything in the whole movie feels lifted from something better and scarier. You feel Bertino joylessly jerking your chain throughout, from Liv's sensuous coitus interruptus to the countless camera-angle cheats all the way to the final "reveal." And (spoiler alert) Bertino unforgivably goes out of his way to deny you a glimpse of the other Strangers' faces (which I suppose technically wouldn't make them "strangers" to us anymore). Roger Ebert gave Bertino props for being just a kid, but youth is no excuse for not having a third act.
In the restroom afterwards, two teenage dudes wearing Lakers caps were trading gloomy looks over the sink. "I thought it was going to be something different," one said. To which his companion quoth, "I thought we'd at least get to see their faces."
I suspect they weren't even film students.
*"Stargate"**.
**(Except for James Spader's bravura Goldblum/John Ritter impersonation.)
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