Film Review

03 December 2008 21:33 BST

The Strangers

Directed by Bryan Bertino, out August 29th, in cinemas, starring Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman, Gemma Ward, Kip Weeks, Laura Margolis, running time 85 mins.

In a nutshell…

Dull and certainly not funny games.

What's it all about?

The film opens with a growly voice offering the following narration:

"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 11th, 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."

Or, in other words, they're made up. There is also no factual basis for the film. That said, it concerns pretty young couple Kristen (Tyler) and James (Speedman) who arrive at a secluded country house only to find themselves terrorized by three masked intruders.



Who's in it?

Liv Tyler made her breakthrough in 1995 indie comedy Empire Records before a leading role in Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty. The daughter of Aerosmith's Steven Tyler - though for years she believed her father was guitarist Todd Rundgren - Tyler essayed romantic roles in Armageddon, Plunkett & Macleane and Inventing the Abbots, before her iconic performance as the Elven princess Arwen in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and has most recently been seen stepping into Jennifer Connelly's shoes as Betty Ross in The Incredible Hulk.

London-born and Canada-raised, Scott Speedman starred alongside Gwyneth Paltrown in her father Bruce's Duets before a long-running role in JJ Abrams' drama Felicity. He has most recently starred as an unwilling lycan in the Underworld franchise as well as starring with Wes Bentley in Weirdsville.

University of Texas graduate Bryan Bertino makes his cinema debut with The Strangers after being awarded a Nicholl Fellowship (a grant awarded to unproduced writers by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences).

As an example…

"Why are you doing this to us?" - Kristen
"Because you were home." - Dollface

Likelihood of a trip to the Oscars

It certainly won't get a look in from the Academy and probably isn't violent enough to really register with torture-porn fans but could get a nod at the MTV Movie awards.

What the others say

"It's all efficiently nerve-jangling, with Tyler and Speedman credibly registering every hue of panic." - Dennis Harvey, Variety

"The movie deserves more stars for its bottom-line craft, but all the craft in the world can't redeem its story." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times

So is it any good?

Not really. The premise is hardly inspiring or original and while Tyler and Speedman do their best with a script with initially promising subtext, the constraints of the genre mean they're soon acting without a hint of logic.

Bertino deserves some credit for an evocative opening (though the growly voiceover raises a smirk) and with a sparse production and a definite sense of suffocation (despite the isolation of the country house), it's actually a fairly impressive chiller at first. It's clear that Kristen and James' relationship has gone awry and we're soon far more invested in their characters than we might have thought, with the disturbance of the titular intruders as unwelcome for the audience as it is for the protagonists.

Most of the scares are initially subliminal and it seems to be turning into a good old fashioned 'bump in the night' horror until things steadily take a turn for the irrational, with James leaving the house for… well, no reason at all. There's soon an entirely predictable first death and a steady realisation on the viewers' part that all these villains really do is walk about menacingly in masks and bang things.

While Michel Haneke's Funny Games is thematically similar and equally joyless, at least it has a message (as pompous as the Austrian's intent might be). Bertino's lack of writing experience is all-too-obvious, with genre boxes ticked off through an interminable 85 minutes and a climax that might as well scrawl 'sequel' across the screen.

Eli Roth, John Carpenter and Wes Craven can rest easy - there's no threat to their rule of the horror kingdom.

4/10

Lewis Bazley

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