The Home Invasion Horror On Netflix That Became An Instant Cult Classic
With Halloween just around the corner, it’s prime time for watching scary movies. The Strangers on Netflix starts like any other home invasion story, right down to the ‘inspired by true events” voice-over introduction, perhaps a nod to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and hapless children finding a brutal scene and calling 911 before picking up the action, presumably sometime the night before.
Writer and director Bryan Bertino cites the Manson Family murders and a series of break-ins near his childhood home as the inspiration for the 2008 The Strangers starring Liv Tyler (Lord of the Rings) and Scott Speedman (Underworld). In an interview, Bertino tells a story from his childhood about people knocking on doors and breaking into homes where no one answered.
There isn’t a lot of real dialogue once the action sets in, but the actions of the home invaders and the young couple don’t require a lot of words to be interesting or understood.
Kristen (Tyler) and James (Speedman) are driving on a dark road, unspeaking. The Strangers drops the viewer right in the middle of things with no explanations. She’s crying, and he’s clenching the steering wheel. This sets the stage for what’s to come, beginning on unstable, tense ground.
When a persistent girl looking for Tamara comes knocking, at first it breaks the tension, but when she returns after James has left to run an errand, still looking for the girl who isn’t there, we know something isn’t right.
During most of the movie, the lighting is soft, leaving room for deep shadows but keeping it light enough that the action isn’t swallowed up or completely obscured during home viewing.
The alternating punctuating silence and incredibly loud and jarring noises, like a shrieking smoke detector or random music in spaces, keep the viewers on their toes and Kristen and James suitably unnerved. The Strangers‘ score is well written, well timed, and just grating enough to keep the edge and disquiet without tipping into discomfort.
The universality of elements makes The Strangers hit that much closer to potentially next door to wherever the watcher is.
There isn’t a lot of real dialogue once the action sets in, but the actions of the home invaders and the young couple don’t require a lot of words to be interesting or understood. The backdrop of music in The Strangers doesn’t drown out the screaming or blunt the feral nature of Kristen’s panic.
The costuming choices for the attackers, the very plain doll-like masks for the girls and the burlap or knit mask for the man, kept them anonymous and hidden. They could have been anyone. The setting, in a semi-rural sort of place with no real distinguishing features, could have been anywhere. The universality of elements makes The Strangers hit that much closer to potentially next door to wherever the watcher is.
Early test viewers saw a different ending than the theatrical release and that very different ending, including the unmasking of the invaders and clean-up of the scene, was never released, though the original script for The Strangers that contains it can be found online.
There are a number of very tense moments and a few jump scares, but it is more tense and disturbing than scary. It is violent, but the worst of the violence is off-screen, with plenty of screaming to mark it clearly. The Strangers is a solid addition to any list of home invasion horror movies to watch this spooky season, even if it holds no surprises.
Production moved smoothly despite Liv Tyler’s bout of tonsilitis due to all the screaming and a few weather delays on location in North Carolina. Early test viewers saw a different ending than the theatrical release and that very different ending, including the unmasking of the invaders and clean-up of the scene, was never released, though the original script for The Strangers that contains it can be found online.
Most critical reviews tended toward the negative, with Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times saying, “The movie deserves more stars for its bottom-line craft, but all the craft in the world can’t redeem its story.”
Some reviewers continue to recommend it as Clark Collins of Entertainment Weekly, listing it as a modern-day slasher classic. Most viewers seem neutral on the movie as Rotten Tomatoes reports the movie’s rating at 49 percent for critics and 48 percent for viewers. The Strangers more than made back its production budget of $9 million. During its run, it had a successful box office return of $82.4 million.
Given the success of the film, a sequel was quickly announced but ran into some trouble along the way. After many delays in both development and production, The Strangers: Prey at Night was released on March 9, 2013, to roughly the same reception as its predecessor with slightly less box office success.
In August 2022, Producer Roy Lee announced that there would be a trilogy of consecutive movies set in The Strangers universe, all of which are in post-production and slated for release sometime in 2024.
