The Strangers
Director: Bryan Bertino
Year Released: 2008
Rating: 1.0
A teary-eyed couple (Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) walk into a house, get stalked by a trio of maniacs wearing masks, commit a medley of horror-movie mistakes and then get stabbed. The punchline? The killers live to stab again (booo)! Context-free and nearly dialogue-free, this relies on technique to convey a sense of 'terror' and fails even at that - it begins with an INGSOC stat about the number of violent crimes that take place in America each year and then goes through the motions of punishing two people for no reason and expecting you to sympathize with them. I'd argue it has a conservative agenda but it gives up so little it's hard to tell what Bertino was thinking … if indeed he was thinking of anything at all aside from how to light his set (the interaction between the Jesus Kids and the killers doesn't amount to much). At least with Jason Voorhees you can claim there's a motive....
