Strangers [DVD] [2008] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

I recently had watched this movie, and I must say that without question this movie is the scariest, and creepiest movie I have ever seen. In fact it was so scarry that I slept all the lights on the last two nights, and I keep a baseball bat by my night stand.

I am not going to recap the movie ad nauseum the way some of the other reviews here have already done, however I will give a high level perspective of why this movie is so good at being scarry.

1. There are no ghouls, ghosts, vampires, and demons. The premise of this movie is litteraly one group of people taking advantage of other people.

2. The costumes used by the strangers were simple, and eloquent. Exactly the kind of stuff one could pick up at any party store or costume shop. I feel as though this added a whole other level of realism to the movie.

3. Overall creepiness of the type of harrasment the strangers inflicted on the kristen, and james.

Some negatives that I observed about the movie:

1. James and Kristen making some stupid decisions, that would have any person with a brain scratching their heads...ie...splitting up when you have these psychopaths coming at you from all directions.

2. The strangers violating the laws of physics by being able to subtly and quickly sneak into a space and scrawl messages across the walls, windows of a room to further torment our protaganists, and never ever be seen or heard by James and Kristen. This just doesnt seem plausible to me.

3. The ending didnt really give me closure.

With all that, the movie was highly effective at serving its purpose which was to freak me out, and entertain me, which it did for it's entire 80 minute running time.

I highly recommend this movie, and am only giving this movie 4 stars instead of 5 for the reasons I state above.

Not a terrible setup. Masked psychos terrorize a couple late one night in a large house nestled in the corner of a small, rich suburb. A bit slow to start and the characters aren't anything close to interesting, but the setup is decent and the atmosphere is good.

Problem? Everyone's a moron.

If you're a home intruder and the people at home have a gun, you're not going to keep attacking. No you're going to run the **** away and go to some other house some other night. If you're the guy being intruded upon and are sitting in the corner one night with a gun you're not going to go outside and play Elmer Fudd. No, you're going to sit in that corner and stay awake until morning when the suburb will be active. If you're the intruder watching the guy play Elmer Fudd with a shotgun you're not going to bull-rush him and succeed. No, you're going to be blown the **** away. And if you're some guy who just had his windshield smashed before your eyes and sees signs of an obvious break-in you're not going to quietly sneak inside to investigate. No, you're going to drive away and call the cops.

The suspension of disbelief is just too much in this film. It's a battle of who wants to be killed more and who's more inept at taking an advantage. And when a victor emerges it's hard to care, not only because all the characters are boring as cardboard, but because they just succeeded winning the Darwin Award of the night in a rather fierce competition.

This atmospheric - and undeniably horrifying - directorial debut from Bryan Bertino gave me the chills unlike any other film that I have seen in a long while.

I won't go into the story, because most of you already know it, but I will tell you this: if you are as jumpy and as easily frightened as I am, do NOT watch this one alone. I made the mistake of doing that the first time, and I couldn't finish it. I had to rent it later on, and watch it with a room full of people in order to see the entire film. The thing that makes the film so effective is simply this: this could happen to anybody. Anybody could break into your home and terrorize you for no reason.

The direction is strong, and Liv Tyler does an excellent job. You can tell that it was definitely inspired by Haneke's FUNNY GAMES, but it's not a rip-off by any means. Bryan Bertino has done an excellent job with his first film, and I look forward to his next film.