The Strangers
2008 Directed by Bryan Bertino
Synopsis
Lock the door. Pretend you're safe.
After returning from a wedding reception, a couple staying in an isolated vacation house receive a knock on the door in the mid-hours of the night. What ensues is a violent invasion by three strangers, their faces hidden behind masks. The couple find themselves in a violent struggle, in which they go beyond what either of them thought capable in order to survive.
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Narrator : What you are about to see is inspired by true events. According to the FBI, there are an estimated 1.4 million violent crimes in America each year. On the night of February 11, 2005, Kristen McKay and James Hoyt left a friend's wedding reception and returned to the Hoyt family's summer home. The brutal events that took place there are still not entirely known.
When I first watched this it was a horrible copy, and I didn't even see the guy standing behind Liv Tyler in the horrifying scene shown on the cover. Let me just say when I saw it the second time, I was like...
:O!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
then for like 10 more minutes I was still like...… -
I am glad this film's middle part drags and stumbles otherwise I don't think I could have taken it.
The poster sums up everything I find horrific in this film. See, there is one thing that scares me and that is having no control over what is happening to you. Here the Hitchcock approach of showing the danger and keeping the protagonists unaware of it made me squirm in my seat for most of the first act. Being scared by something is always a personal thing, and let's just say I did not feel at ease in my own home while watching it.
I'm glad that the quality of the film dropped in the second act when the plot takes…
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Home invasion Horror, Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman
Now this didn't hold up quite as well as my first time watching it but I still enjoyed it. When I first watched The Strangers I was actually quite spooked and that doesn't happen very often at all. I think it's because it's relateable and real. Jason or Michael coming after me isn't relateable because that's never going to happen so it's not as scary to me even though I love those movies. The Strangers starts off real slow and is super quiet, this really helps build the tension as things begin to take place. A lot of the scares are jump scares but they fit in this type of a film…
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“Well they want something. People don't just stand out there, staring at us like that. They want something.”
-James Hoyt (Scott Speedman)This entire film can be summarised in a quote from Chris Pontius, Jackass 2. “That was intense, really intense. Well not really intense, but pretty intense.” Couldn’t have said it better myself, Chris.
The Strangers is the feature debut from director Bryan Bertino, whom also wrote the script. By that alone, Strangers is a terrific accomplishment, delivering far more tension and scares than the average thriller. In its entirety, it’s definitely a cut above the typical fare in the genre, and for a first film shows real if unrefined talent.
The acting is excellent from the tiny cast.…
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After seeing all the love for this here lately and armed with a shiny new Netflix account I thought it would be good to catch up on The Strangers!
Well...I was pretty bored by it really.
On the positive side, it was good to get some psycho women for a change and them doing it for absolutely no reason made it scarier. Also, it must have been quite tense because when my phone slipped onto the floor I had to climb down from the ceiling.
But it annoyed me by showing the end at the start, I truly hate that trend, and I didn't like either character so didn't really care what was happening to them!
For such a short film it seemed to go on forever too.
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I thought it was a good idea to watch this the day after there was a home invasion in my town and people were robbed at gun point, while I was home alone. It was not a good idea.
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Yes there are some good genuine scares. But sadly, I believe that, even within the horror world, this film is vastly overrated. You'll see when you watch it.
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A friend told me to watch it. I put it into the player and the date the film takes place is the date i was watching it... not the year... so its not that wild.. just a coincidence. It made the first ten minutes of the sike fest more awesome.
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Despite being a huge fan of the horror genre as a whole, there has always been one subgenre that I've been too scared to watch and that's home invasion. Something about having your tranquil home taken over and made into a place of horror scares me. Alot.
So as an introduction to the genre I chose what seems to be one of the favourites and bloody hell, I understand why. My movie watching seat is on the sofa, next to the lamp which is always off when I watch films. I kept it on for pretty much the whole film.
If the whole film had carried on in the standard that the first half set then it would have been…
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Home invasion Horror, Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman
Now this didn't hold up quite as well as my first time watching it but I still enjoyed it. When I first watched The Strangers I was actually quite spooked and that doesn't happen very often at all. I think it's because it's relateable and real. Jason or Michael coming after me isn't relateable because that's never going to happen so it's not as scary to me even though I love those movies. The Strangers starts off real slow and is super quiet, this really helps build the tension as things begin to take place. A lot of the scares are jump scares but they fit in this type of a film…
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I have to admit I really enjoyed this psychological thriller and found it the most entertaining scary movie of the year. I cant say it was scary, but it was intense. To begin with the concept was interesting; everyone fears the presence of strangers when staying at an unknown house in the middle of nowhere. The strange knock on the door by a total stranger and her asking for an unknown person to them made the movie creepy and had you wondering what that was all about. Liv Tyler was also good at her role (playing a scared character is probably one of the easiest emotions to show in a film, all you have to do is show fear, scream,…
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This review reportedly contains spoilers. I can handle the truth.
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This is the only film I have ever walked (let's be real I ran) out of because it was way too fucking stressful.
In hindsight, deciding to sit through Kingdom of the Crystal Skull while I waited for my friends to finish The Strangers might have been worse, but I guess I'll never know.
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I had such high hopes. This was going to be the movie Vacancy wanted to be but failed. But this one fared no better.
The movie starts off very promisingly, with just the right kind of slow-burning creepiness and tension. Unfortunately, from there it devolves into nothing more than a long series of jump-scares, and never really goes anywhere, culminating in a pointless and unsatisfying ending. When will Hollywood make another genuinely scary movie?
It did succeed in one thing , though: That first half ensured that I don't think I'll ever be able to spend the night in a house out in the middle of nowhere.
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I did like the movie...but I'm not really sure why. It's a very similar yet less effective version of the French movie "Ils". The tension is there but ultimately, the movie is filled with a lot of cheap fake-out scares, the most offensive of which occurs at the end.