What you are about to see is inspired by true events. According to the F.B.I. 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 went to a friend's wedding reception and then returned to the Hoyt family's summer home. The brutal events that took place there are still not entirely known.

This is what we are told at the beginning of the movie. Trust me, this gives NOTHING away, but establishes a very basic plot. When this movie came out I was excited to see it. It looked like it was going to be really scary and very well done. I just finished watching this last night and amidst the hype, I just wasn't impressed.

There's not all bad in this movie though, the story, while very basic does get pretty tense. In the scenes where the creepiness factor is needed, it's turned up several notches. This makes the tension in those scenes so thick you can almost cut it with a knife. Sadly, this is also one of the movie's downfalls. Once the tension is gone in a scene it doesn't come back for a little while. Nothing like dangling a carrot in front of your audience.

This brings me to the acting. The acting was done well, and is probably the best thing in the movie. I can't stand Liv Tyler as an actress, but she did pretty good here. I read in an interview that she won't do anymore horror movies because filming this one scared her so much. The actors who I feel did the best job were Gemma Ward, Kip Weeks, and Laura Margolis. These three play the antagonists and they all deliver a very creepy presence while on screen. They moved like ghosts and delivered some decent jumps.

Bryan Bertino wrote and directed this movie. Before moving to the director's chair, he was a gaffer. That's a pretty big step and it's usually hard to do a good job if it's a first-time director. I think that he did a really good job with the direction and I'd like to see more of his work as a director. Unfortunately, the script is lacking. I understand that it's supposed to be tense, which it is in parts, but that tension doesn't last. The movie also moves at a VERY slow pace - if the tension had kept throughout the movie, this would have been amazing. A slow tense movie can really get you biting your fingernails. Sadly NOTHING really happens until the movie is almost over, then when it does start ot happen, it's over almost as quickly.

All in all I feel that this movie just didn't live up to the hype and didn't accomplish what it set out to do. I think Bryan Bertino is a talented director and has a pretty good future. I'd definitely watch another movie directed by him.

I'm gonna give this 4.5 out of 10 reasons to keep your cell phone charged.

This film did create some tension (if not suspense). It features actors who deliver good, actorly performances. However, there was something mechanical and dry about the entire exercise. While it was all very accomplished (particularly for a first-time director), it just didn't amount to anything.

Scott Speedman (whom I sort of like for reasons I can't explain) and Liv Tyler (who usually annoys me) give quite good performances as the leads. Their relationship sets up a certain amount of anxiety even before anything creepy starts happening, which creates a strong base from which the director tries to turn the tension up to 11.

But it just doesn't work. The entire "scary" part of the story is basic and predictable. It just has no point, so it can't support what the film is trying to make of it. I don't generally require a ton of explanation for the mayhem in my movies, and I think the desire for things to "make sense" hurts more movies than it helps. (I agree with Stephen King that, sometimes, it's better when you aren't given reasons and stuff just happens 'cause it happens.) But here, something - anything - to ground the goings on, or give them some context, would have helped.

Now, frankly, I'm not sure what explanation or background for these events would be anything but total buzz-kill. If there was some explanation like "it's all revenge for XX," I'd just be complaining about that. But something was really missing here - like a point. Successfully scary movies about random violence (Last House on the Left, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a gazillion others) usually have some animating social tension behind them (goddamn druggie antisocial hippies, Vietnam, whatever). Here, there's just no repressed real-world anxiety that makes this a raw nerve for the viewer. I think that's why you often see children getting thrown into the mix. People go apeshit if they think about their kids being threatened, so it can make just about anything scary.

Liv Tyler's character asks, like 4 or 5 times, "why are they doing this to us?" and given the absence of any other answer I kept remembering Bruce Campbell on the Evil Dead commentary track when Ash asked that question: "because you're so STUPID." Which is unfortunate because, for a nice change, the lead characters don't consistently behave in a wildly stupid way (instead, this film's Stupid Award(TM) goes to the bad guys apparently being able to walk through walls, move things super-fast without being seen, and know the layout of a house they've never been in better than the owners).

In short, I entirely agree with GeneralCinema's take on this film - good acting, good tension building, that all goes nowhere. I'd like to see what this director could do with some material with some actual substance to it.

4/10

After an emotional night, a young couple are terrorized by a trio of psychos.

Wow, can I summarize or what? That was totally alls I had to say to let you know what the plot of this thriller boils down to.

This is the kind of thing I find scary. I’m not afraid on a normal day. I live in a small town, I’m way too big and broke for anyone to really want to mug (I’m not unmuggable, I’m just not a tempting target.) I don’t have a single enemy. What this adds up to is I feel relatively safe most the time despite being slightly paranoid. The reason is I feel confident that most people won’t try to harm me, why would they?

But then the crazy people issue slips in. You don’t know what a crazy person will do, they’re crazy. They might just decide eating your eyeballs is the only way to cure them of the disease they have that’s turning them slowly into Big Bird. You can’t tell what a crazy bitch like that might do. That’s scary.

Fear is situational, and this is a scary situation. In an age when social anxiety is becoming the norm, this is a movie about just that. I’m afraid of people because I don’t know what fucked up things are going on in their fucked up little minds and I don’t trust any of you. Let’s talk on the internet, but don’t you dare sneak over to my house at 4am and start beating on my door. It’s just a scary subject and I think this movie exploited my discomforts just fine. Add on the realistic terror of what happens to the guys friend, if you have any empathy at all that had to hit home. When it happened I really felt true horror, I felt a huge “Oh God, what have I done?” for the guy.

The masks were perfect. The lack of a human face can make anyone seem like a monster, the reason why slashers tend to wear masks has never been more apparent than in The Strangers.

Having Liv Tyler in the lead really helped the movie along for me. Not that I’m a huge fan or anything, but I like her, so I automatically cared a little about her. I don’t want to see an actor like Liv brutalized, she seems nice and wholesome. It matters.

I know the ending could have been more satisfying, there could have been more story. I understand that the pointlessness of it all is part of the damnable horror of it, but for entertainment I would have liked just a little more insight into the motivation of the antagonists. I think when it’s all said and done the way they were completely dehumanized and faceless worked best.

It’s a good movie. Modern, thoughtful, emotion-wrenching. Say what you want, but it’s not a movie that was uninspired or based on any of the formulas I’m tired of watching. I didn’t know what was going to happen next, and I didn’t know how it was going to end. The movie worked for me, but not the kind of thing I see myself watching over and over.

8 out of 10 times I would have done things differently