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A couple reader reviews of THE STRANGERS come in!
SPOILER ALERT !!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I'm quite looking forward to this flick. Ever since the first teaser poster this has looked interesting. It's not the most original idea ever, a couple terrorized in their house, but it looks like they're really taking the material seriously and giving us a real horror film. I'll be seeing this myself tomorrow and I'll let you know what I think when I get back from that screening.
We have two reviews in so far. One spoiler-lite and the other super spoilerific. I'll start with Jubba's fairly spoiler free review. Enjoy!
Greetings,
I just got back from a Toronto screening of the horror/thriller flick
"The Strangers" starring Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman. This review
will be relatively spoiler-free. The trailer for the movie pretty
much sums up the plot of the film and you get exactly what they
advertise, no more no less - for whatever that's worth to you. A
couple in an isolated house is terrorized by multiple masked people
with no apparent way to escape. But does it work? Is it scary? Is
it believable? For the most part, I would say yes to all 3 questions.
A film like this wants to put the viewer in the shoes of the victims,
to make you think that these horrific events could happen to you and
to get you just as scared as the people in the movie. The camera work
is never too dark, too shaky, or too close-up. Wide shots of empty
rooms and the woods are scary enough when you know somebody is there,
somewhere.
The opening, during which Liv Tyler's character is left alone in the
house for a period of time, is probably the most effective part in
terms of delivering real scares. She hears knocks on the outside
doors that get louder and more persistent and she finds indications
that someone has been in the house or may still be in there with her.
If you can put yourself in her position and feel even a little of what
her character feels at this point, you'll get some good scares as the
creeping dread takes over. The creepiness stays throughout most of
the film but does eventually give way to those "jump out and scare
you" moments when there really isn't anything else new left to be done
for scares. The final scenes with Tyler and Speedman recapture some
of the real terror as the film reaches its climax.
The "bad guys" do perform the typical here-one-second-gone-the-next
trick that nobody should be able to do (unless you're Jack Bauer) and
after a while, the grotesque appearances of the masks somewhat lose
their shock effect. One that happens, you really get the sense that
these people are seriously fucked up. They bad guys are human and
maybe that's even worse.
One of the things that I liked is that the two main characters aren't
your typical horror movie leads. They don't make bad decisions
(except for splitting apart once) and everything that I thought they
should try to survive, they did try, to varying degrees of success or
failure. They put up a fight and plan as best they can, but are never
given enough time to relax and figure out what to do. They are cut
off from the world, they are in the middle of nowhere. The bad guys
are hiding in the woods, coming and going from the house, and they
don't want you to survive. If you can get into the movie enough and
put yourself in their shoes, you'll get the scares you're after. It's
a movie about sick people doing sick things to people just for the
hell of it, so don't expect anything else.
The performances of Tyler and Speedman are solidly adequate. By this
I mean that they did exactly what was required for this movie.
Tyler's character was the weaker or the two and some may complain that
she could have been a stronger female character. All things
considered, there probably aren't too many people who would hold up
terribly well in her character's position, so it's believable and
effective. Speedman, with whom I was completely unfamiliar, also
delivered a believable performance as the stronger boyfriend without
ever seeming like he was flexing his muscles or trying to do anything
but survive with his girlfriend. There were one or two plot points
that seemed a bit contrived, but I won't hold that against the actors
and I'm pretty sure that they were added to draw out the length of the
movie. I don't think it ran much longer than 75 minutes. It didn't
need to, though. The movie is like an extended version of the
trailer. If you like what you see in the preview, you'll like the
film. If you want some creepy scenes, some jumping scares from the
darkness, or a feeling that maybe this could happen to you, then
you'll like what "The Strangers" has to offer. If you didn't like the
trailer, stay away from the theatre this time around.
-Jubba
The next review comes from someone calling himself The Big Tin Man and it's full of spoilers and bit more negative than Jubba's take.
Hi Harry,
If you use this you can call me The Big Tin Man.
I just got back from seeing The Strangers.
I was very intrigued by the trailer to this movie, as it stated it was based on "true events" and looked kind of creepy. Well what you see in the trailer is pretty much what you get in the movie for 95% of the film.
There will Spoilers in this review.
The movie doesn't start off with a lot of promise. It starts with the "based on true events" speach at the beginning and is then followed by some BS crime statistic, which is supposed to explain what we are about to see. I always know a movie is in trouble when it tries to justify what you are about to see, because this is what's happening in the world around us. Also, it clears up, what I had started to suspect, this is not a true story!!.
The film then moves to an opening shot of the aftermath, as two boys discover the aftermath. There is the obligatory 911 recording of one of the boys screaming about what he had seen.
After that, it's all a flash back to what has lead up to this point.
We meet Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman driving in a car home. They are said and not speaking because she said no to his marriage proposal. Who can blaim her she's Liv Tyler and can do better than this guy.The films tells us she's not ready for marriage.
They go to house that appears to be out in the middle of no where. Once inside they start to talk about things and then start to get it on (a Tyler nude shot would have made this film worth while no matter what happened next), but this is short lived as a loud knock on the door occurs.
This is how the film works. It's a peek a boo, loud bang, and then nothing movie. This is okay and the film makers do it well. They build the tension well.
The couple goes and answers the door. At the door is a young lady asking if another girl was at the house. The young lady's features are kept hidden from the darkness outside. The couple says she has the wrong house and the young lady leaves.. After that Speedman goes for some smokes and leaves Tyler by herself.
This is when the stuff in the trailer begins and continues after Speedman's return. The three masked people appear.A lot of loud banging and masked faces appear out of no where. You know this is what you are getting and again it's done well. The theatre jumped at most of the right times. This goes on for just over an hour. Oh buy the way his is a very short movie, not even an hour and a half. The movie throws every scare tactic at you and even the obligatory "friend death".
Spoiler alert.
After about an hour, the cat and mouse game starts to get old and then the movie changes, for what I hoped would be the better.
The masked people capture and tie up our couple. This is where I was hoping for some interaction between the masked people (I didn't say killers because at this point, THEY had not killed anyone).
To my disappointment...no not disappointment...too my utter dis-a fucking- belief, the only interaction is what is shown in the trailer. Yes it consists of the "Why are you doing this?"..."because you were home" and that is all.
The masked people take off their masks (we still don't get to see their faces, probably to keep casting for a sequel cheap) and stab Speedman and we hear Tyler scream.
The only other interaction from the baddies occurs after this, when they speak to the christian boys who discover the house. The killers are driving away in a pick up truck, and pull over to talk to the boys. After that not so creepy scene (the boys are obviously okay because of the first scene of the movie), the boys discover the carnage and then we get the scream at the end of the movie by a character that should be dead.
I hate it when a movie doesn't take the time to write a fucking ending. If I had known the ending was like this I would have snuk out and watched Indian Jones. I feel cheated by a movie I wasn't expecting much from but had built up such good tension, just to be let done by a crap ending.
If you want to see this based on the trailer, just watch the trailer over and over for 80 minutes this way your payoff is better than what the movie gives out.
Cheers.
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+ Expand All
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that a boy gotham, celebrate your stalking of AICN in the middle of the night (I swear I'm just surfing the net cause I can't sleep).
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Also learn some grammar skills when writing a review.
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this really does look like "avant garde torture porn" and a straight plundering of haneke's vision and minus the intellectual subtext
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this really sounds to me like a watered down ripping of european horror, namely "Inside" and as stated before "Funny Games" i guess it's kind of a step in the right direction for shitty commercial horror(?) but probably not
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it's a remake of funny games.
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funny games was just remade by its own director, if you read that somewhere please provide a link
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May 27, 2008 3:13:38 AM CDT
"Oh buy the way his is a very short movie" No you buy it!
by orionsangels
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where a couple get terrorised in their remote home by a bunch of hoodies
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I imagine there must be a lot of pre-existing "Home Invasion" movies in order to claim it as a take on a genre(The Last House On The left and such). Because the plot of this sounds so much like "Ils" that I thought it must be a remake. I suppose the based on true events spiel is a useful argument also.
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...they need to rape someone for it to be really hard.
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and now said movies are imitating funny games ... fucking sad, what with the "no shaky cam, etc." just more curdled shit, the fact that rape is considered a criteria for movies to be hard (unless dum guy is joking) is just a reinforcement of how bad things have gotten, fuck this SHIT
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"Ils" (Them)
After J-Horror remakes, here comes the F-Horror remakes -
Looks a lot like Vacancy.
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I thought it was because they wore hooded sweatshirts. Using that logic, if they wore pajamas, I would refer to them as "Jammies".
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Nathan Petrelli has super jammies. He can fly at super speed in just his jammie bottoms and they don't come off!
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May 27, 2008 7:15:36 AM CDT
sounds like a HUGE waste of money. I hate non-sensical endings.
by mike_d
c'mon, no actual reasoning for the tormentors to kill these ppl other than "cause you were home."??!! PFFT!!!!
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...Yeah, those damn doll-mask chicks and the cloth bag-hood guy showed up at my place last night. Luckily, I've got steel-core doors and a rottweiler. They were just rampaging all over the neighborhood, too. Every time the cops came by, it was "spooky disappearing trick" time. Whattaya gonna do, right?
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This is a SPOILER: I think that the movie would have had much more shock value if it had not started off by saying "based on true events, nobody is totally sure what happened" because you know that the 2 people ain't gonna make it and you never really have much hope for them, which is something a flick like this could have benefitted from. In terms of why would people do this just cause someone's home? Shit happens just because you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Next time you're in a big house by yourself and you think you hear a footstep or a knock on the door...imagine how it would be if there really WAS someone trying to get in - or already in the house with you.
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This seems like total crap. The Japan trend of a few years ago sucked. Torture porn isn't scary-just disgusting. That low budget Wes Craven stuff (Last House on the Left, Hills Have Eyes) is amateurish and ridiculously overrated. I love a good horror film but they are so few and far between. Off the top of my head all I can think of as really great horror films are THE EXCORCIST, THE OMEN, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS(Donald Sutherland version), HELLRAISER 1 AND 2. I'm sure I'm missing a few but there just don't seem to be many great horror films.
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Hey Harry,
It's the 21st Century. Can we get an edit feature? -
That is all
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they could have gone that way but they didn't. i was worried at one point it would go that way but was relieved when it wasn't very graphic at all...disturbing, perhaps, but nothing like a "hostel" film. this wasn't a super great film, but like i said in the review, it delivers what the trailer promises.
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Sounds like another American retread. The original French film is "Them" or "They"? I think.
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Yeah, reviewer lost all credibility at that point.. That chick is horrible to look at. She looks like Beeker from the muppets with giant hips.... It does sound like there is no 3rd act in this movie which sucks because the previews look pretty freaky!
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"torture porn" is a lazy term used by unintelligent "family-oriented" critics like Michael Medved. It says nothing.
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I saw the remake a few months ago. It played for one week at the local arthouse theater and then vanished. I still can't decide if I liked the film or not. I really didn't care for the metaphysical stuff at all but the rest of it was pretty tense and well made.
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that Liv Tyler would turn this chump's proposal down.
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or Cloverfields.
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But I think the French one played with the "Is this a supernatural threat?" question for a bit, before the "twist" reveal of ... they're just fucking kids with no morals.
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Could someone PLEASE tell me where I can see Indian Jones. I've been waiting to see the swashbuckling adventures of that Native American Adventurer
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someone please show me where this is a remake of Ils
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IS this what horror has devolved into? Even the cartoon hackers of the 80's like Jason and Freddy had some backstory, a reason for what they did. Fucking "Motel Hell" had more of a story than this seems to. I'm not a fan of the Saw movies but they work on some level because the killer has a motive. Even though it's just a reason to come up with elaborate gory torture devices and see people ripped apart they bothered with some context. Sometimes that invisible person in the woods is scary, but when someone says they do it "because you are there" without putting any context into it like "Funny Games" or even "Deliverance" then it smacks of lazy writing and cheap scares.
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it looks pretty decent
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this shit would never happen in real life - no to me anyway - a hard-to-swallow premise for a scary movie - there would be some dead masked assholes in and around my cabin
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I think the scary thing is that there ARE people who carry out acts of random violence and we never get a real backstory. When it comes down to it, does it really matter WHY someone is mugging you or stalking you? This film is about random, unexplained violence by real people, not supernatural beings with a backstory to make them interesting. It's not that kind of horro film, and it may not be for you if you don't like that.
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May 27, 2008 7:38:22 PM CDT
Looks slightly less nihilistic and demonic than "Funny Games"...
by jackislost
but I am not really interested in either movie. Has anyone seen that commercial with Liv Tyler playing Nintendo? I think it's some of her finest work and I say that with all due respect.
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Hey movie geeks, check out this great new blog on blogspot called thebitterproducer
it's hilarious! -
Funniest typo ever.
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From the looks of the trailer, this flick was 'ruined' right around the time it was green lighted, dude.
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my full review will be up later at horror movie a day, but to sum up - yes its a lot like Them, but it's better. Them suffered greatly when they leave the house and run around the sewer, which broke the tension. This has no such break. But like the first guy says, it doesn't offer much beyond the trailer. I really liked the trailer, so that was fine by me, but I can see why folks might be put off by it. I also saw it for free, take that into consideration.
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Fucking hilarious.
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You need to give them a type of black-box in talkbacks like your cronies get to do. Maybe a temporary thread specific red-box for reviewers. I kept thinking that JUBBA in the talkbacks was an INDUSTRY PLANT until I realized he was just one of the orignal reviewers. Also, I noticed that you black-boxers get to do comment corrections why not the rest of us? I say all of us get to edit or else NOONE GETS TO EDIT. Else, you are a fake LIBERAL in speech but a true CONSERVATIVE in actions. Democratize EDITS you SOB.
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I saw this movie before, all it was, was a dude sitting on his hand for a couple of minutes... I didn't really like it.
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