As a genre, the American horror movie has been dead for some time. It's hard to remember the last seriously unnerving American horror movie (The only two worthwhile recent horror flicks being Great Britain's The Descent"" and Spain's ""The Orphanage."").
From the ""Saw"" to ""Hostel"" films, the latest barrage has been less a continuation of the genre than a sustained eulogy for it. Bryan Bertino's debut film, ""The Strangers,"" is the nail in the coffin - a collage of old photographs from movies we can't quite remember clearly but have an emotional interest in recreating. The problem is, this movie has forgotten even what films it is channeling and what made them scary in the first place.
As the film opens, James (Scott Speedman) and Kristin (Liv Tyler) have returned from an awkward formal dinner - James has proposed to Kristin, who refused. They drive home to a secluded cabin decorated with celebratory rose petals and strategically placed bottles of wine. Kristin regards James' optimistic preparations with morbid appreciation, while James sulks in the background, devastated and ready to cut the vacation short.
This opening is effective; James and Kristin behave just like we would expect lovers put in their awkward situation: Kristin tiptoes neurotically around James, pretending to tend to his emotional needs, while James is bewildered and trying to be mature, though he seems several minutes away from slitting his wrists. Here are real people, we think, living complex lives and going through a whirlwind of emotions. These characters, at least for the first five minutes, might be the most complex and humanized characters to ever be stalked by horror-movie bandits. This doesn't last long, of course.
Even the first ""scary"" scene has a note of inspiration. In the middle of ""I'm sorry for not marrying you"" sex at 4:00 a.m., Kristin and James hear a sudden knock on the door. James answers, revealing the vague, darkened outline of a girl's face. This is a seriously disconcerting shot, conjuring up feelings of real vulnerability. But while the shot is eerie, it's also the last piece of inspired filmmaking in ""The Strangers.""
Like most of his peers, Bertino distrusts his ability to chill us naturally. He can only do so artificially with loud noises, bumps in the night, sudden screams and sustained camera shots waiting to be interrupted by more jolting sound effects. This is a cowardly way to make a horror movie, but alas, it is the norm. Is this scary? Sure - the same way a haunted house is scary. The ride begins, the ride ends, and everybody walks out unscathed and laughing. Nobody takes the ride seriously; nobody is emotionally unnerved. The ""horror"" here is not in being vulnerable, but startled.
Bryan Bartino is too shallow to understand that the louder the knocks on the door become, the less jarring they are. Once we see the strangers, who invade the house soon after the initial encounter, we see they are not strangers at all. They are staples of junk horror movies, wearing different costumes from the last time we saw them but still as undeveloped and boring as ever. Here the three killers wear crude masks - two from potato sacks (much like the deformed child in ""The Orphanage"") and the other from some old Chinatown parade artifact. Like their relatives from other movies, these strangers enjoy writing ominous words in blood on the windows long before blood is even shed.
Is there scary material here? Yes. Perhaps too scary. Loud noises and jump scenes are not just the least creative form of horror, they are perhaps a deliberate attempt to sanitize the film and prevent viewers from thinking about the implications. In the opening credits, we learn the film, is based on a true story. Maybe it is. But by focusing the scares elsewhere - making ""The Strangers"" an R-rated game of Peek-a-Boo - Bartino has minimized oversensitive reactions. If this is Hollywood's line of thinking, then we should feel insulted.
Recall ""A Clockwork Orange,"" Stanley Kubrick's overrated but frequently disturbing X-rated nightmare. In the most stirring scene, the gang of sociopathic rapists break into an upscale mansion, brutally rape a women in front of her husband and then beat him to a bloody pulp - all while giving a rousing rendition of ""Singing in the Rain."" Nothing in ""The Strangers"" compares to the horror of watching this account of violent trespass. The scene does in just 10 minutes what ""The Strangers"" can't do in 90: show us real human violation and real helplessness in the face of evil until we understand it intimately and mournfully.
Perhaps Hollywood is still apologizing for that rape scene. If this is the case, they should stop. We have been sanitized with juvenile scares for decades. We deserve adult scares, by mature directors who read our minds, know our deepest fears and can tell us something about them. Keeping us in a perpetual adolescence is probably not Bryan Bertino's point, but it is the only way he can make money.
