The Strangers (2008 film)

Plot

James and his girlfriend Kristen arrive at James' childhood summer home, tired and irritable after a long evening at a friend's wedding reception. It is revealed through flashback that while they were there, James proposed to Kristen and she refused. James calls his friend Mike and asks him to come pick him up in the morning. Shortly after 4 a.m., there is a knock at the door, surprising since the house is so remote and far from any civilization. A young blonde woman, whose face is obscured by low lighting, asks for Tamara. When told that she is at the wrong house, she leaves with the casual caveat that she will "see them later."

Due to the tension between them, James leaves to go for a drive and purchase a pack of cigarettes for Kristen; before he departs, he starts a fire in the hearth. Shortly after he leaves, smoke emanating from the fire sets off a smoke alarm, which Kristen attempts to disarm when she is startled by another knock at the door; she drops the smoke alarm on the floor and retreats to the bedroom, unnerved. She calls James' cellphone from the landline, but their call is cut short. When she returns to the living room, she sees the smoke alarm now sitting on a chair, and realizes someone else has been in the house. When she hears a noise from the backyard, she arms herself with a knife, and opens the curtains to find a man wearing a sack mask, staring at her. Panicked, she hides in the bedroom and hears people outside banging violently against the walls of the house.

The noise eventually stops and James returns to the house. After she explains what has happened, he finds his car ransacked and the blonde woman, now wearing a doll mask, watching him from afar. His phone has also had its battery stolen and he realizes the house has been breached. The couple attempt to leave in James' car but a third masked stranger in a pin-up girl mask rear-ends them with a pickup truck, forcing them to flee. Back inside the house, Kristen and James find a shotgun and wait for the intruders.

Mike arrives and realizes something is wrong after seeing the smashed car. James, mistaking him for one of the intruders, shoots him dead. A devastated James remembers an old radio transmitter in the backyard shed. He leaves and encounters the blonde woman. When James tries to shoot her, the masked man knocks him out. Kristen hears the shot and runs to the shed. She finds the radio, but the pin-up girl smashes it. Kristen rushes back to the house, where she is incapacitated by the masked man. Both James and Kristen are now unconscious.

When James and Kristen awaken, it is morning, and they are tied to chairs in the living room with the masked strangers standing before them. Kristen asks them why they are doing this, to which the blonde woman replies, "because you were home". The strangers then unmask themselves to the couple offscreen, and take turns stabbing the couple in the stomach and chest before leaving. They drive past two young boys on bicycles who are distributing religious tracts. Dollface asks for a tract. The boy asks if she's a sinner and she replies, "sometimes". The strangers drive away, as the pin-up girl states, "it'll be easier next time".

The two boys come upon the house and discover the chaotic scene, including the bodies of Kristen, James and Mike inside. One boy approaches Kristen's body, and as he reaches out to her, she wakes up and screams.

Cast

Screenplay and inspiration

Director Bryan Bertino also wrote the film's script, which was originally titled The Faces. Bertino took a particular interest in the horror genre, noting how one can connect to an audience by scaring them. He also stated that he was significantly inspired by thriller films of the 1970s while writing the film.

According to production notes, the film was inspired by true events from Bertino's childhood: Bertino explains::

As a kid, I lived in a house on a street in the middle of nowhere. One night, while our parents were out, somebody knocked on the front door and my little sister answered it. At the door were some people asking for somebody who didn't live there. We later found out that these people were knocking on doors on the area and, if no one was home, breaking into the houses".

In interviews, Bertino stated he was "very impressed" with some of the theories circulating on the Internet about the "true events" the movie is allegedly based on, but said that his main inspiration was the true crime book Helter Skelter about the Manson Family murders; some have said that the film was also inspired by the unsolved Keddie Cabin Murders of 1981 that occurred in a small vacation community in California's Sierra Nevada. The film's premise has been compared by some film critics to the French horror film Them, released two years earlier.

Casting

When casting the two leading actors in the film, Bertino sought Liv Tyler for the role of Kristen. Tyler, who had not worked for several years after the birth of her son, accepted the part after being impressed by the script: "I especially liked Bryan's way of saying a lot, but not saying everything. Often in movies, it's all spelled out for you, and the dialogue is very explanatory. But Bryan doesn't write like that; he writes how normal people communicate—with questions lingering. I knew it would be interesting to act that." Canadian actor Scott Speedman was cast as James. Speedman was also impressed by the script, stating that "the audience actually gets time to breathe with the characters before things get scary as hell. That got me interested from the first pages".

In casting the three masked intruders, Bertino chose Australian fashion model Gemma Ward for the part of Dollface, feeling she had the exact "look" he had imagined; Ward was officially cast in the film in September 2006. In preparing for the role, Ward read Vincent Bugioisi's Helter Skelter for inspiration. Kip Weeks was then chosen as the Man in the Mask, and television actress Laura Margolis, who found the script to be a real "page turner", was cast in the part of Pin-Up Girl.

Filming

Bertino had not initially planned on directing The Strangers; however, after Mark Romanek who was originally attached to direct the project backed out, he took over.

On a $9 million budget, filming for The Strangers began on October 10, 2006, and finished in early 2007. It was shot on location roughly 10 miles outside of Florence, South Carolina, and the 2,000-square-foot (190 m²) house interior was constructed by a set crew. Though the film takes place in 2005, the house itself was deliberately constructed with an architecture reminiscent of 1970s ranch houses and dressed in furnishings applicable to the era. The property was located on the outskirts of Timmonsville, South Carolina. During production, it was reported that Liv Tyler came down with tonsillitis due to the extensive screaming the role required her to do. Despite weather complications, the film was largely shot in chronological order.

Music

A musical score, consisting of 19 pieces composed by score producer tomandandy, was released on May 27, 2008 and was distributed by Lakeshore Records. The album was received with generally positive reviews by critics. "It's a creepy score for what appears to be a movie that will make you jump as well as make sure that the doors are locked at night," writes reviewer Jeff Swindoll. "This is an impressive score and adds a tremendous chill-factor to the film," says Zach Freeman of Blogger News, grading it with an A.

Track listing

All tracks written by tomandandy.

Release

The producers originally planned for a summer release in July 2007, which was eventually postponed to November 2007; however, this date was postponed as well. The producers instead opted for a summer release, and The Strangers had its theatrical debut in United States and Canada on May 30, 2008. In its opening weekend, the film grossed $21 million in 2,467 theaters, ranking #3 at the box office and averaging $8,514 per theater. The overall box office return was successful for a horror film, earning $82.4 million at the box office worldwide.

Marketing and promotion

In late July 2007, Bertino, Tyler and Speedman attended San Diego's annual Comic-Con event to promote the film; all three were present for a questions-and-answers panel session, as well as a screening of the film's official teaser trailer; this trailer was released on the internet several weeks later. It was not until March 2008 that a full-length trailer for the film was released, which can be found on Apple's QuickTime trailer gallery. The trailer originally began running in theaters attached to Rogue Pictures' sci-fi film Doomsday (2008) in March 2008, and television advertisements began airing on networks in early-mid April 2008 to promote the film's May release.

Two one-sheet posters for the film were released in August 2007, one showing the three masked Strangers, and the other displaying a wounded Liv Tyler. In April 2008, roughly two months before the film's official theatrical debut, the final, official one-sheet for the film was released, featuring Liv Tyler standing in a darkened kitchen with a masked man looming behind her in the shadows.

Home media

The Strangers was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United States on October 21, 2008. Both the Blu-ray and DVD feature rated and unrated versions of the film, with the unrated edition running approximately two minutes longer. Bonus materials include two deleted scenes and a making-of featurette. The DVD was released in the UK on December 26, 2008. The film was available on Universal VOD (Video on Demand) from November 19, 2008 through March 31, 2009.

On July 21, 2017, Scream Factory announced via Twitter that they would be releasing the film in a Collector's Edition Blu-ray at an indeterminate date.

Reception

The film received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 45% based on 151 reviews, with an average rating of 5.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The Strangers provides a few scares, but offers little else to distinguish itself from other slasher films." Metacritic reported an average score of 47 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Negative reviews included Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times who gave the film one-and-a-half stars out of four saying: "The movie deserves more stars for its bottom-line craft, but all the craft in the world can't redeem its story." Elizabeth Weitzman of the New York Daily News said that "Bertino does an excellent job building dread" and that the film is "more frightening than the graphic torture scenes in movies like Hostel and Saw," but criticized the "undeveloped protagonists" for being "colossally stupid and frustratingly passive." Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post panned the film, calling it "a fraud from start to finish." Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle, said the film "uses cinema to ends that are objectionable and vile," but admitted that "it does it well, with more than usual skill."

Among the positive reviews, Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times said The Strangers is "suspenseful," "highly effective," and "smartly maintain[s] its commitment to tingling creepiness over bludgeoning horror." Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter called the film a "creepily atmospheric psychological thriller with a death grip on the psychological aspect." James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, saying that, "This is one of those rare horror movies that concentrates on suspense and terror rather than on gore and a high body count." Scott Tobias of The Onion's A.V. Club said that "as an exercise in controlled mayhem, horror movies don't get much scarier."

Additional positive feedback for the film came from Joblo.com reviewer Berge Garabedian, who praised director Bertino for "building the tension nicely, with lots of silences, creepy voices, jump scares, use of songs and a sharp eye behind the camera, as well as plenty of Steadicam give it all more of a voyeuristic feel." Empire Magazine remarked on the film's retro-style, saying, "Like much recent horror, from the homages of the Grindhouse gang through flat multiplex remakes of drive-in classics, The Strangers looks to the '70s.", and ultimately branded the film as "an effective, scary emotional work-out." Slant Magazine's Nick Schager listed The Strangers as the 9th best film of 2008. Also, the film was ranked #13 on "Bravo's 13 Scarier Movie Moments" television piece.

Critical analysis

Film scholar Kevin Wetmore noted the film's portrayal of violence as a reflection of its contemporary culture, writing: "Death is a random act in post-9/11 horror—the result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, as the cliché goes. Unlike in eighties slasher horror, for example, where engaging in negative behavior such a drinking, doing drugs, having premarital sex are often forerunners to being killed by the killer(s); [here], death is random and unrelated to one's behavior."

In The Horror Show Guide: The Ultimate Frightfest of Movies, Mike Mayo noted the film's "grim realism," writing that the main characters "could have wandered out of a gloomy Ingmar Bergman film," ultimately branding the film as an example of "naturalistic domestic horror" akin to Michael Haneke's Funny Games.

The film has also been noted by scholar Philip Simpson as highlighting "the divide between the underprivileged and privileged classes," as well as for its inversion of commonly-held beliefs about violence in urban areas and pastoral ethics: "The Strangers, as many horror films do ... undermines the conventional notion of rural society as a simpler, crime-free place. One might call the narrative sensibility informing The Strangers 'pastoral paranoia', in that danger lurks among the rough folk of the country rather than the suburbs and cities. Of course, it may be that provincial violence is a result of contamination, or in other words that the kind of stranger-upon-stranger violence typically associated with urban life metastasizes to the rural, a phenomenon noted by Louis Wirth."

In his book Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film (2014), scholar Tony Williams notes the film's setting within a 1970s-era home as representative of an "American tradition of violence that is random and without any coherent explanation." Additionally, Williams reads the three masked assailants as metaphors for the "repressed and unresolved tensions affecting the couple inside the house."

Sequel

Rogue Pictures' producers confirmed to Variety that a sequel is in the works, tentatively titled The Strangers: Part II. In an article published by Bloody-Disgusting, it was said that the script would be written by Bryan Bertino and the film directed by Laurent Briet. Shock Till You Drop reported that Relativity Media put The Strangers: Part II on hold because they found that the movie might not be in their interest, even though Universal Pictures is willing to release it. However, Rogue Pictures confirmed in January 2011 that the sequel is now in production, and was supposed to begin filming as early as April 2011. The plot follows a family of four who have been evicted from their home due to the economy, and are paid a visit by the same three strangers from the first film. It is not known whether the sequel will receive a theatrical or a straight-to-DVD release.

According to Tyler, Part II was slated for release in 2014, but that did not occur. In 2015 The Wrap reported that the sequel was in production, and that Relativity Media and GK Films scheduled the film for a December 2, 2016 release date, but it was later removed from the schedule.

In February 2017, it was announced that Johannes Roberts would be the sequel's new director and that filming would commence during the summer of the same year. In May 2017, it was announced that the cast would include Christina Hendricks, Bailee Madison, and Lewis Pullman and production would begin in Los Angeles on May 30. In June 2017, it was announced Martin Henderson had joined the cast. Filming has started in Florence Kentucky June 2017-July 2017.

Filming concluded on July 10, 2017.

Works cited