The Strangers

Michael Hanekes two versions of Funny Games are both great films, but they both completely fail in their goal. Haneke wanted to make audiences reevaluate their relationship to film violence and, hopefully, never go to a movie looking to be entertained by the suffering of others. I've seen both the German language original AND the English remake in the past six months, and still, there I was, sitting in a theater watching Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler being tormented by home invaders.

The Strangers writer/director Bryan Bertino has a few tricks up his sleeve and at first, they're deeply effective. The use of sound design, for example, with dead-of-night knocks coming against heavy wooden doors, records skipping and ominious footfalls all setting a mood of dread and unease. Also, the strangers themselves, wearing creepy blank masks, seep in and out of the corners of frames, usually while one of the protagonists is looking the other way, their horrible presence a secret between the interloper and the audience. These moves raise gooseflesh the first few times they're used, but they steadily lose power with repetition. Onc the novelty of these gags wears off, you're left with an all-to-familiar catalogue of scares and would-be scares as two young lovers tryto fend off three masked psychos dressed like Decembrists concerte-goers. Too often, Bertino undercuts his most powerful moments with an intrusive, blandly atonal score or has his main characters do insanely counterintuitive things just to keep the action moving forward. Funny Games might fail as a vehicle for shaming people out of enjoying film violence, but it's a smashing success at creating terror by maintaining an oppressive air of reality through long, unbroken takes and a total lack of music. If Bertino could marry some of his more winning stylistic tics to a more auster, Hanekeian approach, he might make a truly disturbing, super-fun horror film. Wouldn't it be a gas if Haneke's efforts to banish sadism from the silver screen ended up perfecting the genre?

Score: 7.5