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Posted by: psycheoutsteve at June 7, 2008, 12:20 pm

Topic: The Strangers Forum: JoBlo

Quote: Originally Posted by MadsenOMC SPOILERS!!! Well I finally got around to seeing it. Now, I wish that I hadn't. It saddens me to see so many give this pile of shit and poor excuse for a horror movie a pass. I actually found the beginning to be promising. An unsettling mood is created quite well in the first 10 or 15 minutes. It's eerily quiet, the couple is clearly in distress (though they ain't seen nothing yet), and we all know the shit is about to hit the fan. My only beef is the flashback in a flashback. I don't think they needed to go back to the wedding. It's a case of treating the viewer like an idiot. We can easily figure out what's going on without that scene. Other than that, though, my main impression at that point was a positive one. Then, it all goes badly oh so quickly, and for such a short movie, I truly felt like I was sitting in the theater for half a day. The Strangers does an excellent job representing much of what is wrong with modern American horror. The most accurate word to describe this movie is tedious. For over an hour we sit there and watch as someone wearing a mask abruptly pops up behind one of our leads, and we're oh so terrified, and then the masked person disappears. This happens over and over and over and over again. The problem is that it's really not even all that scary the first time, since the marketing campaign gave it away. I knew that dude was going to pop up behind Liv Tyler. I was waiting for it and expecting it. When it did finally happen, it isn't nearly as creepy as it could/should have been. The admittedly effective marketing totally diluted the scene's potential potency. Then the director milks that for all it's worth, employing it repeatedly to diminishing effect. It's like he couldn't figure out any other way to get this thing to 90 minutes, so he just continuously has the villains show up behind someone and disappear. I'm sorry but this seasoned veteran of horror flicks needs a little more than that to frighten him. Another major problem is the boo scares/music & sound effects. Every time someone pops out of nowhere (and it's not always even the villains), it's punctuated with insanely loud music/sound effects, beating the viewer over the head & reminding them TO BE SCARED! Well, all that does is not scare me. It just gives me a fucking headache and annoys me. It is such a tired and lazy tactic. And in this movie it wasn't even necessary. It's not that kind of movie, at least not at the beginning, and it feels completely out of place here. There are as many boo scares in this movie as in any generic PG-13 horror movie. The very end is also incredibly, terribly, excruciatingly lame. One last ridiculous boo scare for teenagers. To be fair, The Strangers isn't all bad. Like I said, the beginning is nicely done. The stabbing scene near the conclusion is also effective. They show enough without showing too much and rubbing our faces in it, and it's hard to watch. Um, yeah, and that's about all this has going for it. If this isn't your first horror movie, I can't imagine being impressed by it. As if the glut of remakes and sequels and reimaginings wasn't bad enough, this shit is what passes for "original" American horror. Demand a little more from your horror people. Any random five minutes of Ils is better than this entire movie. Ils is scarier, it's paced better, it's got better atmosphere, the writing & directing are better. It's no comparison. The Strangers is no scarier than any average Asian horror remake. It utilizes the same techniques for scares and seems directly aimed at teens. The fucking trailer for Quarantine is scarier than this movie. 4/10 The reasons you hated this film seem to be some of the reasons I liked it. I agree with you on the beginning scenes, I thought they were nicely done, although we probably could've done without the wedding flashback. As for the boo scares you found redundancy with, I thought they were some of the most effective boo scares I've seen in a recent horror movie. I jumped during this film much more than I have in any horror flick in the past two years. It wasn't exactly a masterpiece, but it gave me what I craved, a jumpy, tension filled, horror flick.

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