From the opening title cards and stolid narration that recall The Texas Chain Saw Massacre<\/em>, The Strangers<\/em> evokes familiar horror traditions while making them feel immediate and unpredictable, right up to its final stinger. Those title cards claim that the movie is based on a true story, but as in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre<\/em>, the definition of \u201ctrue\u201d is flexible. \u201cThe brutal events that took place there are still not entirely known,\u201d the dour narrator intones, setting up expectations for a movie that will deliberately provide no answers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bertino also provides only minimal information about his main characters, just enough to understand their emotional state before they are attacked in the seemingly cozy remote vacation home where they\u2019ve arrived following a friend\u2019s wedding. James (Scott Speedman) and Kristen (Liv Tyler) are introduced with their faces bathed in the red reflection of a stoplight, an obvious but evocative foreshadowing of the violence to come. They return to a house decked out with rose petals, candles, and champagne, the remnants of a now-futile romantic gesture that James planned to follow his marriage proposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While their relationship is now fractured following Kristen\u2019s rejection of James\u2019s proposal, The Strangers<\/em> isn\u2019t a movie about a couple coming back together in the face of terrible adversity. James is petulant and distant, although he tries to be tender, and it\u2019s easy to see the seed of Kristen\u2019s reluctance in the way he dismisses her initial fears about the home invaders who arrive when he\u2019s out taking a drive to clear his head. Even after he sees one of the three masked intruders, he tries to downplay the danger, offering to talk to them and resolve the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey don\u2019t want to talk,\u201d Kristen tells him, which is all the explanation necessary for who they are and what they\u2019re after. The Strangers have only a handful of lines of dialogue in the entire movie, beginning when the youngest, designated in the credits as Dollface (Gemma Ward), knocks on the couple\u2019s door, inquiring, \u201cIs Tamara home?\u201d The odd specificity of her request makes it scarier, especially when she returns to ask a second time. \u201cSee you later,\u201d she says when they first send her away, in the most offhand way of promising further harm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n James\u2019 unwarranted bravado eventually evaporates in the face of the Strangers\u2019 unrelenting assault, and part of what makes their invasion so scary is how banal it often is. Instead of delivering threats, they write \u201chello\u201d in lipstick all over the house\u2019s window. Many of their actions are indistinguishable from annoying but harmless teenage pranks, just making loud noises or standing motionless and staring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bertino derives maximum terror from the Strangers\u2019 constant background presence, especially in the first appearance of the apparent leader, known as Man in Mask (Kip Weeks). He looms in the hallway behind Kristen as she looks out the window for the people she assumes are still outside her locked, secure house. The Strangers<\/em> constantly destroys that sense of domestic security and peace, as the attackers intrude on even the couple\u2019s most intimate moments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They first arrive when James and Kristen are about to have what looks like make-up sex, and their assault reveals further fractures in the couple\u2019s harmony. When James struggles to assemble and load the shotgun left behind by his father in the family home, Kristen is confused by his difficulty, since he told her that he often used to go hunting. The pointless lie he once told, perhaps to impress her when they started dating, now takes on life-or-death stakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That attention to detail, which extends to keeping track of Kristen\u2019s leg injury after she falls while running away, is what makes The Strangers<\/em> so immersive and so scary. The invaders\u2019 eventual explanation for their actions (\u201cBecause you were home\u201d) has become an iconic horror line for a reason, encapsulating everything terrifying about the chaos and cruelty of modern life. A trilogy that expands \u201cthe world of The Strangers<\/em>\u201d is anathema to everything Bertino achieved. An opening flash-forward shows the crime scene left shockingly as-is, and that\u2019s how viewers should approach the movie, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The Strangers’ Is streaming on Max<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/strangers2-1024x684.jpg\")
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