Strange… The Strangers has no substance

I just saw The Strangers and honestly it’s a pretty solid film. How did this occur, with Liv Tyler as the heroine and a cast of models as the masked intruders? The answers are much (much much much) simpler than you’d imagine:

The strangers don’t have outlandish motives.

There was a time when an approximation of psychological realism in a murderer’s motivation was a breath of fresh air for horror, and has allowed films like Psycho to achieve canonical status. However, nowadays audiences feel either weighed down by too much psychology or cheated by motivations that tie up the film with a nice, neat ribbon. Rather than Freudian examinations of a killer’s life (for example, the lengthy scenes depicting Michael Meyers’ childhood in Rob Zombie’s reimagining of Halloween) or exotic psychological explanations (dissociative identity disorder in The Secret Window, Session 9, and countless others) they appreciate less complex motives.

Dissociative identity disorder (a.k.a. multiple personality disorder), popularized by Hitchcock’s Psycho, is not only trite, but lacking in realism. (”Real” cases of DID are quite rare).

The fact that the strangers are most likely “thrill killers” is understated, never articulated in the film. (When Kristen finally asks the baby-doll faced stranger why they’re victimizing them, the girl flatly and evasively responds “Because you were home.”) Compare this to Murder By Numbers, another film about kids who thrill kill, and you can see how a minimal focus on character motivation results in a tighter, creepier, and less clichéd narrative.

The actors are never required to display any emotional range.

The Strangers has only the sparest of narratives: James and Kristen arrive home after a party where Kristen rejected his marriage proposal. Strangers start to terrorize them. James accidentally shoots his buddy. Strangers continue to terrorize them. James admits that he lied about his father taking him hunting. Strangers overpower and kill them. So what are the emotions that are asked of Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman? Sadness, fear, anguish/regret. Pretty easy fare, considering how limited the dialog (much of which is delivered into mobile phones or vintage radios) is. They only have to look sullen or alternately terrified.

The really complex emotional work, when James realizes he has killed his best friend, is neatly avoided by focusing on Liv Tyler’s character’s imploring “What? James, what?” and James’ back (no joke). At the end, when the two realize that the strangers are really going to kill them, the scene is surprisingly brief and revolves more around the diamond wedding band Kristen decided to wear than their professions of love to one another. (Good idea, Liv. Let the rock do the acting for you!)

So why do these characters work? The answer is that James and Kristen are stand-ins for audience members: white, boring, middle class people with mundane interpersonal relationship problems. Also, a sense of realism is achieved when audiences don’t get the whole story in a few hours: I have included the fact that James lied about his relationship with his father for this very reason. It is one of the few overtures toward character development that are made in the film, and that’s what most of this stuff is, just overtures. All we really need are hints that these characters have emotions and inner lives beyond the few hours the audience spends with them. Beyond that, any explicit details of their lives clash with an audience members’ ability to identify with them.

Bryan Bertino, the writer/director, avoided stale subgenres.

Virtually every review of The Strangers mentions how it is not a splatter film (charmingly referred to as “torture porn” by non-professional reviewers) and how this simple fact is refreshing. When the horror genre is overly permeated with certain stock styles or narratives (like J-horror ghost stories) audiences swing like a pendulum to something different (in this case, tension). So it’s not that The Strangers is a masterpiece of suspense, but rather that it is light on gore and doesn’t have a 12 year-old female ghost with long, dark hair.

The Strangers is unremarkable for the most part. However, there are some redeeming elements to the film. It is interesting to see that Bertino and co. have accomplished a few goals in terms of cinematography, sound, and pacing:

1. The framing of several shots is rather impressive. I’m thinking specifically of one instance (pictured in a publicity photo to the right) where Liv Tyler is crawling through the back yard and the highly kinetic camera (something I usually deplore, but which in this case beautifully masks the impending jump scare) pulls out and pans up slightly to reveal one of the female strangers.

2. The soundtrack, diegetic and non-diegetic, is rather well done. One of my favorite parts was when the dissonance of a skipping record was put to good use as a jarring, disorienting device. (This isn’t exactly original, but the execution was spot on.) The only thing I felt it lacked were music cues when the strangers appear (à la the original Halloween) to heighten the mood. The filmmakers probably felt this would be over doing it, but I think when used discriminatingly such cues could really have enhanced the strangers’ appearances toward the end film.

3. Tension scenes are remarkably long, with the strangers walking into the background of the frame for extended periods of time. This in itself isn’t really impressive. What I was struck by was how Bertino was able to sustain suspense over these long periods of time, relying heavily on horror conventions (shadow and focus) but also less-used devices to do so. For example, when the male, bag-headed stranger first appears behind Kristen (who is in the kitchen) from a hallway, Bertino allows the camera to move away from the stranger and out of the shot. Although audiences can quite literally not see him, they still have a palpable sense that his menacing presence is still there. Thus, when the camera returns to the space that the stranger occupied, audiences hold their breath waiting for Kristen’s unwitting discovery of the stranger.

So, The Strangers did a few things right, but when the film didn’t do anything wrong it basically didn’t do much. Do I like it? I enjoyed watching it, but I’d like Bertino’s next film to have more substance.

:: Bibliography ::

• CelebrityWonder.com. The Strangers production picture. CelebrityWonder.com. http://www.celebritywonder.com/movie-pictures/2008_The_Strangers/002.html (18 June 2008).
• Emerson, Jim. Close-Ups: A free-association dream sequence. Scanners. http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2007/10/closeups_a_freeassociation_min.html (18 June 2008).