The Strangers (2008)
Directed by Bryan Bertino
After a 4 a.m. knock at the door and haunting voices, Kristen McKay and James Hoyt’s remote getaway becomes a psychological night of terror as three masked strangers invade. Now they must go far beyond what they thought themselves capable of if they hope to survive.
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The downside is that Bertino relies too heavily on occasionally nonsensical terror tricks that every horror buff has seen a million times since John Carpenter's "Halloween" set the standard for domestic fright-night mayhem.
Beyond Them, debuting director Bertino has done his homework, riffing on home invasion classics Straw Dogs and Funny Games, borrowing jumps from Halloween and Night of the Living Dead, and lifting the “based on a true story” tag and sombre opening narration from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Filmmaker Bryan Bertino seems determined to evoke John Carpenter’s “Halloween” with this riff on a Mansonesque home invasion, and he hands himself some powerful visual tools by placing unsettling masks on the killers and playing with shadowy composition.
Bertino also remains subtle with his superb use of framing and backgrounds, reminding of 1978's " Halloween " in the way shots are handsomely composed to suggest that danger could be lurking around every corner.
There's an ax through the door, as in "The Shining," and a hideaway in a louvered closet, as per "Halloween."
It covers the same bloody ground as Peckinpah�s superior "Straw Dogs" (71) and Haneke's more effective unpleasant psychological thriller "Funny Games" (97), capturing only the nihilistic trappings of the latter but failing to bring together a compelling story that holds up to scrutiny when the sun rises and we see how vacuous this sociopathic killing spree plays out.
Debut feature from writer/director Bryan Bertino is clearly influenced by everything from The Desperate Hours, The Shining and Straw Dogs to the more recent Funny Games and Vacancy.
It's not nearly as gruesome or upsetting as Haneke's movie and it has almost none of the agonizing suspense of the genre's classics ("Straw Dogs," "The Desperate Hours").
Beyond Them, debuting director Bertino has done his homework, riffing on home invasion classics Straw Dogs and Funny Games, borrowing jumps from Halloween and Night of the Living Dead, and lifting the “based on a true story” tag and sombre opening narration from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Similar premises were played out to more disturbing effect in films such as Straw Dogs and the recent The Devil's Rejects; and in more dated but effective fashion in The Desperate Hours (the 1955 William Wyler-Humphrey Bogart version).
If, like Bertino, you make “inspired by true events” the centerpiece of your marketing campaign and, like Bertino’s, your story is actually “inspired by a movie we’ve seen before” (2006’s “Them”) and “inspired by a decades-old, exhaustively documented killing spree” (the Manson Family murders), you could be setting yourself up for a bit of backlash.
Instead of the usual remake of an Asian J-Horror hit, it’s very similar to the considerably more intelligent and disturbing 2006 French sensation “Ils” ( also known as “Them”) and Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games,” both 1997 and 2007 versions.
Beyond Them, debuting director Bertino has done his homework, riffing on home invasion classics Straw Dogs and Funny Games, borrowing jumps from Halloween and Night of the Living Dead, and lifting the “based on a true story” tag and sombre opening narration from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
In fact, the opening of the movie, which seems to emulate the narration at the start of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, gives everything away.
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Beyond Them, debuting director Bertino has done his homework, riffing on home invasion classics Straw Dogs and Funny Games, borrowing jumps from Halloween and Night of the Living Dead, and lifting the “based on a true story” tag and sombre opening narration from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Debut feature from writer/director Bryan Bertino is clearly influenced by everything from The Desperate Hours, The Shining and Straw Dogs to the more recent Funny Games and Vacancy.
It's not nearly as gruesome or upsetting as Haneke's movie and it has almost none of the agonizing suspense of the genre's classics ("Straw Dogs," "The Desperate Hours").
Similar premises were played out to more disturbing effect in films such as Straw Dogs and the recent The Devil's Rejects; and in more dated but effective fashion in The Desperate Hours (the 1955 William Wyler-Humphrey Bogart version).
The problem is, there's nothing all that obnoxious about Tyler, notwithstanding her performance in Bertolucci's "Stealing Beauty."
The pacing, the decor, the LPs on the endlessly running old turntable (cliché alert), and especially the spooky nature of the home invasion, all belong to an era when Stephen King and Brian De Palma ruled and movies such as Carrie, The Omen, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Jaws defined the horror genre.
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First-time writer-director Bryan Bertino is a talent to watch, and he shares Roman Polanski's knack (in "Knife in the Water," "Repulsion" and "Rosemary's Baby") for mixing sadness and dread in opening scenes that skillfully set the tone for escalating terror.
There have been great movies about home invasion, like " In Cold Blood ," that made more of it than gruesome "events."