The Strangers
At some point during “The Strangers,” as I sat there glumly, bored to distraction, I considered whether horror just wasn’t for me. It’s the genre I’ve spent the least amount of time exploring. Should I recuse myself from would-be scary movies and leave them to the aficionados? Then I remembered “The Descent.” Neil Marshall’s masterful creature feature, released in 2006, had it all — a well-wrought plot, honest emotion and genuine terror. What makes a horror movie good is what makes any movie good. In order to be scared, you have to want to know what happens next — and be surprised by the answer. Even defenders of “The Strangers,” if there are any, would have to concede that on this point, it fails utterly. Here’s the premise (Read slowly so you can follow the intricacies!): Three masked people attack a vapid young couple inside a secluded home. The movie’s purpose, painfully clear from the outset, is: Come, see, kill. It exists to pose the question “Why are you doing this?” — shreiked by the tormented to their tormentors more than once — and refuse to answer it. (To do so would require imagination.) It’s “Funny Games” without the irony. And it doesn’t even work as an exercise in austerity. It’s unclear from the filmmaking whether the masked attackers are ordinary Joes or are blessed with supernatural abilities. They look normal enough when we see them, but given the actions attributed to them, I can only infer that they occasionally walk through walls, silently. As the doomed couple, Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman are terrible because the way they’re asked to behave is embarrassing. You’d rather they hurry up and die so you can do something better with your time — and the movie’s less than 80 minutes long!