THE STRANGERS is one of the best horror films of recent years. People I know who have seen it disagree with that statement. I see why they don’t like the film. At first glance, THE STRANGERS is a thoroughly perfunctory genre film with little pretension of being anything more than that. Bryan Bertino, the film’s director, was a gaffer who sold the script first (only the fourth he had written) and then lucked into the directorial chair. This info surprised me since the pedestrian script stands in sharp contrast to the film’s controlled direction and assured visual style. The setup provides little in the way of back story or character development. Much like last year’s mediocre snuff horror film VACANCY, we are presented with an unhappy couple on the brink of separation. Boyfriend’s proposal to girlfriend is turned down at a wedding they had just attended. He’s ready for commitment. She needs more time. A typical clichéd scenario, albeit gender reversed from the more common stereotype. As played (competently) by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, the characters are so generic I not only couldn’t remember their names, I didn’t even remember hearing them (apparently, Kristen McCoy and James Hoyt according to the IMDB). They retire to a remote cabin. The door rings. They answer it. Shortly after, they are beset by a trio of masked homicidal maniacs. No motive or explanation.
The film bills itself as being “inspired by true events,” in such a way resembling the Coen brother’s faux claim of FARGO. Of course, every film could make the same claim if it wanted (it would be impossible to conceive of a film not inspired in some way by some real events). The film’s loose inspiration: several people murdered in the woods with no culprit ever found. Bertino attempts to fill in the dots of this generic scenario. As opposed to examining the banality of evil – that most acts of homicide have mundane motives like jealousy and greed like crimes of passion or home invasion robberies gone wrong, Bertino employs the mythic evil of slasher films. Explaining motives for murders in films is unsatisfying as they are usually trite and uninteresting. SCREAM pointedly poked fun of the need to find a motive for the slasher killer. In THE STRANGERS, Bertino takes the theme of motiveless murder to its logical conclusion: the non-motive motive. The film’s money line is caught in the exchange: “Why are you doing this to us?” “Because you were home,” the masked killer responds before butchering the couple. In a way, the killers in THE STRANGERS resemble Anton Chigurh of the Coen Brothers’ Oscar winning, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. Since NO COUNTRY is a reputable film, the Coen brothers have been credited for plumbing the depths of existential horror. Chigurh has been interpreted in numerous ways. The masked killers in THE STRANGERS are equally striking. Much like NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, the film offers no exit from the killers’ apparently motiveless homicidal tendencies. Yet unlike the Coen Brother’s unabashed nihilism, Bertino offers a more humanistic touch. The film’s surprisingly touching ending occurs when realizing their deaths are imminent, girlfriend gently strokes boyfriend’s hand, revealing that she’s wearing the wedding ring that she had only recently turned down. Facing death, the couple finds love. It’s a love born of terror. Now that I now there’s nothing else, and this is all there is, I can accept it.
