bryan bertino's THE STRANGERS (2008)

what are the terms of the contract between a work of horror and its audience? it’s an interesting question with regard to any and all of the genre’s forms, from oral tradition to Stephen King, but it’s most pressing where the horror film is concerned: we’re asked, there in the dark, to place our trust in a variety of terror that will engage us on its own visceral terms rather than those tethered to our imaginations, and what we generally ask in return is to find entertainment in the provocation of our fears. horror fans come in many forms, of course, from the desensitized gorehound to the teenage girl two rows in front of you that collapses in laughter after each shriek without pausing to breathe; so, too, do the movies themselves run an astonishing gamut of styles and sensibilities, each wholly inappropriate for the wrong sort of audience. but the contract remains, and no matter how perverse the escapism is, it's still perfectly reasonable to expect that escape.

in many ways The Strangers is an exemplary American horror thriller, and a confident, undeniably auspicious debut for writer/director Bryan Bertino. the story is minimal, sure, and not entirely unfamiliar: two young lovers (Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler) find themselves alone in a remote summer home as a trio of masked interlopers, motive-free save for bloodlust, attack them unremittingly through the night.

it's a premise that demands quite a lot from its execution, and Bertino is up to the challenge. this is the rare horror film in which aspiring survivors do not simply run amok, lapsing in judgment at the plot's cruel whims; they are instead drawn as finely as the brisk running time will allow, and act with logic and dignity throughout. we are scared with them because we are ushered comfortably into their heads, and we root for them because we are unable to remove ourselves from the overwhelming doom. the film is intimate, even claustrophobic, and once the terrorizing begins it is never unclear that two against three are vastly unfavorable odds.

aesthetically, too, the film is accomplished. though Bertino cribs his creeps and crawls from elsewhere (particularly recent European horror) it all marries together handsomely, from the slow, sure burn of the first act to the nail-biting melee of the third. the antagonists' simple, striking masks (one little more than a small burlap sack) carry the innuendo of inhumanity as their figures initially fade into and pop out of the careful frames, and later suffocate any hope of mercy, or even the barest explanation. there is creepiness to spare in every empty room, creak or sudden twist of the head, until the film tires of being creepy and throws the curtain aside on a symphony of loud, unforgiving malevolence. there is relatively little by way of the graphic violence, but graphic violence would be beside the point -- the violence has long since crept from the screen and into our own helpless engagement.

more important than its craft, however, and more important than its power, is this: The Strangers is first and foremost a work of irredeemable garbage.

there are, of course, those who would say the same thing about any given horror film, with varying degrees of validity. and there's damn sure little to defend the spate of witless, sadistic Xeroxes currently masquerading as mainstream American horror. but what makes The Strangers so egregious, so thoroughly immoral, is that it's very tangibly a worthy genre entry; its artifice and effectiveness preclude the sort of dismissal we might reserve for, say, One Missed Call or whichever numeral they're remaking Saw under this year. it demands and even deserves to be taken seriously, to the degree that when the lights come up and we realize we've just seen a glorified snuff film while Kung Fu Panda played next door, there's little to do but take the entire genre to task, and ourselves as its accomplice.

but that's a trap. The Strangers' real crime, the one that so readily outshines what might otherwise be called virtues, is that behind its polish there is nothing intended to provoke thought or entertainment; it's a glib construction existing only to manipulate your fears and sour your stomach about the depths of human nature. (worst of all the film plays out under the auspices that it was "inspired by true events", a transparent stab at legitimizing its bleak, abhorrent ending.) more than anything else The Strangers seems a tailor-made validation of Michael Haneke's wry, inscrutable Funny Games, which actively chides and goads its audience for daring to eke entertainment from a murderous home invasion sure to end badly for any innocent with the misfortune to be involved. here, in The Strangers, is the same film lobotomized, substituting slick, sick panache for an inkling of thought or conscience.

this is not what horror film is about. the best of them parade wit, joy, ingenuity, and subtext, while even the worst can rely on intrigue and formula to satisfy, even delight, while they scare. and while it's to be acknowledged that there always have been and always will be works akin to The Strangers, on both its own terms and those of its vexing, meritless cynicism, those films don't typically come in third place at the box office; as little we can ask and expect of mainstream horror, it's always been encouraging that films taking us to the edge are typically willing to give us a lift back.

(from the KNOXVILLE VOICE)