Increasingly rare to come across a thriller that actually thrills - so, even though The Strangers doesn't really do much else apart from fulfilling that basic function, it would be a shame if the movie ended up falling through the cracks and belatedly finding its audience on DVD. Then again, home viewing might actually be the ideal means of experiencing this home-invasion chiller, especially if said viewing could be arranged for a dark, still night in a large, quiet house (or flat): this would amplify a creepiness factor which is already impressive considering the relative inexperience of 30-year-old debutant writer-director Bryan Bertino. 
   But while Bertino might not have made any movies before this, he's clearly seen quite a few - and his movie is none the less effective for being so derivative. Indeed, noting the similarities to (among others) Michael Haneke's original Funny Games (mucho mobile-phone trouble here) Moreau & Palud's French/Romanian variant Ils (aka Them, also supposedly "inspired by true events") and - with the repeated trick of having pale-faced horrors looming and/or disappearing in darkly-shadowed corners of the frame, plus various "he's behind you!" moments - various classics by John Carpenter (most obviously Halloween), is all part of the fun. (Paralells with Nimrod Antal's Vacancy, however are, given the timing, more likely coincidental.)
   Another plus is the stripped-down narrative, which almost entirely unfolds - in something akin to real time - over a single night, in which a rather well-heeled young couple (Scott Speedman, Liv Tyler) are terrorised in their summer-house by a masked trio of implacable, motivelessly malign assailants. There are only three other speaking parts, each of those little more than cameos, in a lean 85-minute affair which, while it largely maintains rather than escalates tension, does a most efficient job in delivering a range of BOO!-type jolts and scares.
   Special credit should go to the sound department - to name names, this includes Scott A Hecker (supervising sound editor), Rick Hromadka (sound effects editor) and Cliff Latimer (sound editor) - as this is a movie in which what is heard is just as important as what is seen. Bertino's slyly-deployed trump-card in this regard is arguably the imaginative selection of "found" tracks played on the house's old-school vinyl turntable, including songs by Merle Haggard, Joanna Newsom and Gillian Welch (#"Should we go outside...#) 
   As such grace-notes indicate, although this is primarily a slickly-assembled mainstream-Hollywood affair, there is a little more going on in The Strangers than immediately meets the eye (it's a classy-looking affair, by the way, with the largely handheld camerawork mercifully settling down fairly quickly after an unpromisingly jittery-wobbly opening reel.) When Tyler's damsel-in-distress yelps "James, we need a gun!" at a particularly fraight juncture, for example, the picture threatens to become an implicit, NRA-approved endorsement of the USA's ever-controversial Second Amendment, the constitutional right to bear arms. 
   But it isn't long before the presence of a loaded firearm yields disastrous consequences for a haplessly innocent individual - the overall moral being, perhaps, that guns are a necessary evil in a society which (as the opening, slightly schlocky, narration - promising "brutal events" - sternly informs) endures 1.4m violent crimes a year, but their owners should be trained and careful in their use. 
   The fact that Speedman (serviceable) and Tyler (makes a decent enough scream-queen) are such an affluent (if emotionally dysfunctional) pair is also clearly not just an accidental detail: we're into punishment-of-luxury territory here, the real problems kicking in when Speedman loutishly chugs from a champagne bottle (decadent!) before chucking his empty into the grass (litter-lout!) and speeding off in his fancy car (drink-driver!). The trio of "strangers", by contrast, constitute a parodic version of a 1950s nuclear family - with "dad" (whose wheezing lungs and floursack-like mask recall the last proper scarefest to hit our screens, J A Bayona's The Orphanage) kitted out in working-stiff suit and grubby tie throughout. And what about the flaxen-haired Mormon boys who stumble across the crime-scene the next morning?
   Bertino doesn't really manage to tie these various subtexts into anything particularly profound or revealing, but the fact that they're even there in the first place - giving a crucial little element of extra dimension to an accomplished little shocker, albeit one that occasionally veers uncomfortably towards 'torture-porn' - bodes well for his future forays into this unkillable genre's temptingly dark neighbourhoods.

Neil Young
26./27.Aug.08

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USA 2008 (copyright-dated 2007)
85m (BBFC timing)

director : Bryan Bertino (debut)
editor : Peter Greutert (Saw IV, Room 6, Saw III, etc)

seen 26.Aug.08 Middlesbrough (CineWorld cinema : press show)