IS THE STRANGERS THE SCARIEST HOME INVASION MOVIE EVER MADE?

Yeah, maybe if you’ve never seen an actual horror movie before. Lacking of memorable tension, following predictable formulas, featuring stupid characters, and being utterly boring, The Strangers is simply a terrible horror film.

A troubled young couple hoping to spend a relaxing weekend in an isolated vacation home are terrorised by three masked intruders.

Director: Bryan Bertino
Cast: Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman, Glenn Howerton, Gemma Ward, Laura Margolis, Kip Weeks
Writer: Bryan Bertino
Release Date (Australia): 14 August 2008
Runtime: 86 minutes/1h 26m
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Country: USA
Language: English

R (for violence/terror and language)

If you’re looking to watch a stupid-fun “horror” movie with no scares or thrills, and a group of sadistic killers with no motivations terrorising two of the dumbest characters of the genre, you’ll get all of that besides the fun from The Strangers. After attending a friend’s wedding reception, a troubled young couple retreat to their isolated family vacation home in the hopes of spending a relaxing weekend together by themselves. We feel that there’s a lot of emotion and tension between this couple, but the story shifts when three masked assailants begin to terrorise them.

This movie has the same effect on you as counting sheep does on a cartoon character. I put The Strangers on hoping for something along the lines of a home invasion thriller with tension and suspense that would keep me entertained. However, I found myself falling asleep around the time where the characters in the film come under threat. When I turned it off to go to bed for the night, my levels of energy and awareness heightened again as I no longer felt tired. But when I put the film back on again, I began to feel drowsy as the rest played out in front of me.

The film’s couple are played by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, both of which aren’t given much material to work with. They’re either just talking quietly between each other, screaming like idiots or acting on edge, things that the most talentless of asshats could pull off just as well. But the writing makes for the biggest issue in their characters, because they’re probably the goofiest of all horror movie characters to exist. Just watch them wave their lives around on a stick and you’ll desperately want to knock on their hollow little heads and scream at them, “why in the actual hell would you do something that dumb? Do your lives really mean nothing more than jack-shit to you?” It’s not that the actors are doing a poor job, it’s a result of poor writing.

The reason why it’s not a downright disaster is because the tension between the characters that’s set up at the start is actually kind of effective. In terms of cinematography, there’s also a few shots that a horror filmmaker would die to include in his movie (one being the wide shot of an intruder standing in the darkness behind Liv Tyler). Unfortunately, this is a horror film that is completely lacking of tension, somewhat due to the fact that you don’t give a shit about the characters; they become disposable when they start behaving stupidly. You want them to get killed off so the film will end. Until the ending however, barely anything exciting, interesting or necessary happens when these strangers begin terrorising them. So not only is the film extremely predictable, but it’s also outrageously boring.

Thank you for reading this page and for more Aussie Boy reviews, visit Aussieboyreviews.com.