For the horror movie, divorce is the new marriage and break-ups are the new together. It’s not enough for a nice looking couple to be terrorised from without anymore. They’ve also got to struggle with resentment and doubt. Warring couples dictate the action of Vacancy, 1408 and now The Strangers, a surprise hit thriller from debuting writer-director Bryan Bertino.
In keeping with this new genre rule, the film follows Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman to a remote country house where the latter planned to celebrate their engagement. Only snag is that she said ‘no’.
The gloomy aftermath of her rebuttal is, in the dead of night, interrupted by an unnaturally loud bang on the door. It is, in the way of these things, far too late when the estranged duo realise that whoever is making the noise outside has no intention of letting them leave.
It’s a simple conceit and nothing that we haven’t seen before. Fans of last year’s Them (Ils) or Michael Haneke’s Funny Games may even flinch at certain uncanny similarities between those films and this one.
For all that, Mr. Bertino knows how to work an audience. The sound design, a crucial component when someone’s possibly coming to get you, is so well constructed this might easily double as a radio play. Suspenseful takes and clever shots act to paper over plot holes. The results are functional rather than breathtaking, but there are enough positives for the interested viewer to understand how this, a movie with a measly $9 million production budget, has taken $60 million and counting. To the surprise of nobody, a sequel is already in the pipeline.