The Strangers (2008)

The Strangers, written and directed by Bryan Bertino, is a horror film based loosely on true events such as The Manson Family murders in 1969. A young couple (James and Kristen) retreat to a Jame's families vacation cabin in a desolate area, where James hoped they would celebrate an engagement, although Kristen declines. The film begins to take place around 4 am at night, where the couple awkwardly try to save their relationship, so the audience is preoccupied by the sadness between the two. Finally they start to make amends and begin to make love until they hear a loud bang on their front door. They open the door to see a 20 year old blonde haired girl in the shadows creepily asking them, "Is Tamara home?" Not knowing what this girl is talking about, they say "no you have the wrong house" and after a period of silence the girl asks, "are you sure?" Without the couple answering, the girl says, "see you later" and walks away. After that random interruption, the couple both seem tired and continue with small chit chat. Kristen says at one point, "I'm out of cigarettes..." and James offers to go buy some for her. After making a fire for her in the fire place, he leaves to go pick them up. Kristen is left idol in the house, puts on an eerie record playing the song, "the sprout and the bean" by Joanna Newsome http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHgyaVmkFzc. Kristen wanders around the small cabin looking at family pictures of her boyfriend, and plays a few notes slowly on an old piano. While looking closely at a corner of a wall in the house, marked with James heights, an even louder knock is heard on the front door. The song fades eerily as she slowly approaches the door, and without opening it, asks whos there. All she hears is the same girl asking, "Is Tamara home?" "You already came by here" Kristen replies. "Are you sure?" She hears back. The night continues in real time; a minute by minute account of Kristens and James point of view. It turns out there are two women and one man terrorizing the couple for fun, in unexpected ways. When they try to escape, the find that James' car windows have been broken and the tires slashed. They soon discover that although the doors in the house were locked, they find signs that the intruders were already in the house, and are toying with them. Some scenes show Kristen oblivious that the male intruder is right behind her in the house. As time goes by, James and Kristen come across all of the intruders. The two women are wearing pin up girl masks with dark hollow eye holes, and the man has a gray sack over his head with eye and mouth holes. At one point the two hide in a room with a loaded gun. At one point one of James friends comes to pick him up, because he got news of Kristens rejection. He soon notices that someone has broken into the home, yet slowly walks inside to see what's going on. As he proceeds into the home, an eerie country song plays on the record player, and there is a shot of the friend walking down a hallway with the male intruder quietly following him with an axe. As the friend approaches the room the two are hiding in, he is mistaken for one of the intruders, and shot in the head and instantly dies. After this part in the movie, the subtle scares turn into the couple literally running from the intruders to hide in a barn or the woods, with no way to call for help. The directer was successful in distracting the viewer before unexpectedly scaring the audience, which makes for a great horror movie. Finally the couple are seen tied up to chairs in their living room, with the three intruders staring at them with knives in their hands. Kristen and James don't know these people and try to plead with them, but to no avail. One of the women opens the curtains and for the first time in the movie, it's daylight, and the early rays soak up the dusty cabin. The three mythodically remove their masks, yet the audience doesn't see their faces. They brutally stab and kill the couple. The camera shows the outside of the cabin in it's secluded area, and the sounds of gut wrenching screams echo in the distance. The movie ends with two Christian boys going door to door to give out pamphlets. A beat up truck rolls down the quiet road, and one of the women killers gets out to talk to the boys. "Can I have one?" She says to one of the boys. He asks, "are you a sinner?" "sometimes" she responds. The audience only sees the back of this girls head. Afterwards, she gets back into the truck, where only the backs of the heads of the killers are. As they drive away, one of the women says, "It'll be easier next time." The boys later discover the cabin with the open door, and finds the bodies of the couple. Though it is a slow paced film, it captures the moment by moment suspense of a home intrusion victim. The audience is constantly sympathetic to what the couples fears are, and find themselves thinking, "what would i do in this situation?". You want the couple to escape but the sad yet somewhat gratifying truth is, they don't survive. There is a lack of gore, fictitious demons, and fast action. The main mood is constant fear and suspense, in one setting, leading the audience to only focus on the points of views of the victims. This is one of the best horror films I've seen in a long time.