The Strangers has no plot to speak of. It can be summed up in one word: survival. Supposedly based on a true story, the film follows the events of a single night in which James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) and Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler) pay a visit to the secluded Hoyt vacation home. Playing off universal fears, the lovers discover to their horror that a trio of masked strangers has invaded the one place they feel most safe. More apparitions than human beings, now you see the strangers, now you don’t. Almost a play in that most of the action takes place in a few, confined spaces, the strangers sadistically toy with their victims the same way a cat plays with an outmatched mouse.

The Strangers takes its time in the beginning, generating empathy with the leads. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it character development, but it goes further than most films of the genre and is enough to keep you passingly interested in what happens to James and Kristen. I found myself most feeling for actress Liv Tyler. She should get some sort of award. She must play a single note throughout the duration of the film — bawling dread. It must have been excruciating.

For inferior horror films to work, they must be populated with characters who act irrationally at best and downright idiotically at worse. And we, the audience, mustn’t perceive any problem with it — to acknowledge their behavioral lunacy cracks believability and transforms an otherwise earnest film into a parody. However, the victims’ stupidity cheapens the malevolence of their attackers. Just once I’d like to see a victim respond with intelligence and wit. What’s so scary when your prey practically throws itself on the end of your gigantic and oh-so-shiny butcher knife? I’ll be impressed Mr. Psychotic Killer when you manage to keep a step ahead of a victim that is every bit as smart and stalwart as you are.

The Strangers is full of people acting stupidly — running toward instead of away from the banging on the front door in the middle of the night, conveniently knocking over breakable trinkets when stealth is of the utmost importance, tripping in the woods while being pursued, finding their cell phones powerless or forgotten in the car when they need them most.

I am reminded of several lines from Scream, a film that relished in its parodic status. When one character is asked if she likes scary movies, she replies, “What’s the point? They’re all the same — some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can’t act and who is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door. It’s insulting.” And later, another chides, “Never say ‘who’s there?’ Don’t you watch scary movies? It’s a death wish. You might as well come out to investigate a strange noise or something.” The reason Scream worked is that it continually winked at its audience, gleefully fulfilling audience expectation and steering the plot exactly where you knew it had to go.

There is a difference between a horror film and suspense thriller, though Hollywood continually blurs the line. Though The Strangers is being marketed as a horror film, it is not. There is nothing supernatural about the villains. Human monsters are far scarier than supernatural ones. When you jump during this film (and you will…often) it is because something surges out of the shadows or goes bump in the night (lots and lots of bumps in the night). It must be said that The Strangers does a good job with creepy, nerve-racking tension. So much so that when there is finally a confrontation, it acts as a welcome pressure valve release.

The end of The Strangers is not worthy of the lengthy build-up and feels rushed, a sort of ill-conceived afterthought, as if the screenwriter ran out of ideas about how to end his story. Literally, the final second of the film is preposterous in its brazen attempt to deliver just one more shock.

© Copyright 2008 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.