Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I have a quicky review of THE STRANGERS for ya’. I would have had this up pre-release, but the day after I saw the movie I was on a plane for Bucharest, Romania. Needless to say, every leg of the flight was packed to the gills and I couldn’t get much work done on the plane.

Now I have about 25 minutes before I have to run off to the set I’m visiting here, so now’s the time if I’m going to review the movie.

I liked THE STRANGERS quite a bit. It’s not perfect… it borrows liberally from foreign horror, specifically the French home invasion thriller THEM and Haneke’s FUNNY GAMES, but it is refreshing to see a horror film take time to create characters so that when they’re attacked you really feel like real people who you know are being terrorized.

Make no mistake, THE STRANGERS is a jump scare movie, but it’s not a cheap one. There are very few stingers to make you jump. Instead writer/director Bryan Bertino uses atmosphere, pacing and ambient sound design to really create a palpable fear.

In fact, the first jump of the movie is one played in absolute silence. Scott Speedman’s character leaves Liv Tyler’s character alone as he runs a late night errand. She’s standing by herself in the home… creepy shit is starting to happen. Knocks at the door, pounding knocks and quiet knocks. She’s freaked out, but not panicking yet.

She’s standing in her kitchen and behind her, in the hall leading to the front door (the locked front door, by the way) the Bag Head intruder slowly walks into the room. He’s out of focus and moving so slowly that it doesn’t register for everybody at first.

What that created was a series of screams in the audience that had me smiling big time. First the sharp-eyed viewers who noticed the man in the background jumped and screamed. The screaming itself scared a new batch of screamers into joining along and then the next group of people saw the Bag Head intruder and the chain continued until it was rolling across the whole theater.

That’s a very strong testament to Bertino’s directing and scriptwork. He created fear without any cheap tricks.

Tyler and Speedman are both very good in the film. I didn’t think I’d ever say that about Speedman… I’m no fan of his UNDERWORLD work and he always came off as a very vanilla personality to me onscreen, but here he really works. There’s depth to his character. His confusion as to what is happening around him mirrors his confusion about his relationship wit Tyler. He loves her, she loves him, but she won’t commit to marriage and he’s hurt by it.

Before the first knock at the door there’s already an awkward atmosphere around the two as they tip-toe around each other.

Another bonus is the movie actually looks like a movie. It’s edited like a movie. It takes itself seriously, in other words. It isn’t an exercise in Avid Farts and fuckin’ extreme! editing. It’s gritty and affecting, letting the story, the sound design and the pacing dictate the horror, not the score or editing.

That said there is a zinger at the end that feels a bit tacked on and a flashback in the first act that tells us shit we already know. It really felt like it was in the movie so the dumbass viewers who can’t pay attention while watching because they’re texting the whole damn time didn’t get lost and miss something.

It’s not all that original, but it is involving and it is scary. I definitely recommend the experience, especially if you’re a horror fan.

Okay, gotta run. Be back soon with some goodies. Lots of great stuff lined up next week, including a handful of interviews and hopefully at least one of these set visits I’ve been on in the last two weeks.

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com