The Strangers

Nathan Kahane

Intrepid Pictures

   **The Strangers** is a 2008 American horror film written and directed by Bryan Bertino and starring Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman. The film follows a young couple who are terrorized by three Strangers over the course of an evening at a remote summer home.

## Plot

The film opens with a panicked 911 call from a boy named Jordan. He says that he and his friend found a house with the door open and dead bodies inside.

After the title card, James Hoyt and his girlfriend Kristen McKay arrive at James' childhood summer home, tired and irritable after a long evening at a friend's wedding reception. It is revealed through flashback that while they were there, James proposed to Kristen and she refused. James calls his friend Mike and asks him to come pick him up in the morning. Shortly after 4 a.m., there is a knock at the door, surprising since the house is so remote and far from any civilization. A young blonde woman, whose face is obscured by low lighting, asks for Tamara. When told that she is at the wrong house, she leaves with the casual caveat that she will "see them later."

Due to the tension between them, James leaves to go for a drive and purchase a pack of cigarettes for Kristen; before he departs, he starts a fire in the hearth. Shortly after he leaves, Kristen realizes the chimney flue is closed, and attempts to open it; while she does this, smoke emanating from the fire triggers a smoke alarm. Kristen attempts to disarm the smoke alarm when she is startled by another knock at the door; she drops the alarm on the floor and retreats to the bedroom, unnerved. She calls James' cellphone from the landline, but their call is cut short. When she returns to the living room, she sees the smoke alarm now sitting on a chair, and realizes someone else has been in the house. When she hears a noise from the backyard, she arms herself with a knife, and opens the curtains to find a man wearing a sack mask, staring at her. Panicked, she stumbles into the hallway, and watches as the front door opens. When she goes to push the door closed, she sees the blonde woman outside, now wearing a doll mask. After locking the door, Kristen hides in the bedroom and hears Strangers outside banging violently against the walls of the house.

The noise eventually stops and James returns to the house. After she explains what has happened, he finds his car ransacked and the blonde woman watching him from afar. His phone has also had its battery stolen and he realizes the house has been breached. The couple attempt to leave in James' car but a third masked stranger, Pin-Up Girl rear-ends them with a pickup truck, forcing them to flee. Back inside the house, Kristen and James find a shotgun and wait for the intruders in a bedroom. One of the strangers puts a country record on the turntable, filling the house with music.

Mike arrives and realizes something is wrong after seeing the smashed car in the driveway. He enters the house, and James, mistaking him for one of the intruders, shoots him dead. Devastated, James remembers an old radio transmitter in the backyard shed. He leaves and encounters the blonde woman. When James tries to shoot her, the masked man knocks him unconscious. Kristen hears the shot and runs to the shed. She finds the radio, but Pin-Up Girl smashes it. Kristen rushes back to the house, where she is incapacitated by the masked man. Both James and Kristen are now unconscious.

When James and Kristen awaken, it is morning, and they are tied to chairs in the living room with the masked strangers standing before them. Kristen asks them why they are doing this, to which the blonde woman replies, "because you were home." The strangers then unmask themselves to the couple offscreen, and take turns stabbing the couple in the stomach and chest before leaving. They drive past the two young boys from the beginning who are walking their bikes down the road selling christian tracts. The truck stops and Dollface steps out and asks for a tract. Jordan asks if she's a sinner and she replies, "sometimes." The strangers drive away, as Pin-Up Girl says, "it'll be easier next time." The boys come upon the house and discover the chaotic scene, including the bodies of Kristen, James, and Mike inside. The other boy approaches Kristen's body, and as he reaches out to her, she grabs his arm and screams.

## Cast

* Liv Tyler as Kristen McKay
* Scott Speedman as James Hoyt
* Gemma Ward as Dollface
* Kip Weeks as Man in the Mask
* Laura Margolis as Pin-Up Girl
* Glenn Howerton as Mike
* Alex Fisher as Jordan
* Peter Clayton-Luce as Jordan's Friend

## True Story

Bryan Bertino was inspired by a childhood memory of break-ins that occurred in his neighborhood. One evening a person came to his door, asked for someone who was not there, and left. Later, Bertino found out that other homes in his neighborhood had been broken into that night.

The film was arguably also based on the 1981 Keddie Resort murders in northern California, although this has not been substantiated by anyone connected with the movie.

According to the closing credits, all of the events and characters in this film was fictional.

## Trivia

* The film was shot in chronological order.
* The interior of the house was built on a sound stage.
* The script was originally titled "The Faces."
* Man in the Mask is the only Stranger who does not speak in the film.
* Liv Tyler suffered from tonsillitis during shooting.
* The film was shot entirely with hand-held cameras or steady cams.
* In order to get an actual reaction from Liv Tyler, director Bryan Bertino would tell her where to expect a loud bang from, but would then have the loud noise come from a completely different direction.
* James's car has North Dakota license plates.
* According to director Bryan Bertino and Liv Tyler, the finale in the original script had much more interaction and dialogue between Kristen and the Strangers. This was cut in order to keep the intruders mysterious and eerie.

## Movie Mistakes

* Blood appears and disappears on James' shirt throughout the movie.
* When Kristen falls and hurts her ankle in the leaves, she starts to climb and crawl. The black tie covering her wound is not on her hand. In the next shot, the tie is back on her hand.
* The ice cream on the table changes from Vanilla to Strawberry.
* The 2 candles on the table are far apart, then much closer together. In the next shot, there are 4 candles.
* In the first scene, the engagement ring box is black. When the couple is at the table, the box is blue.
* James wraps his necktie around Kristen's injured hand. In the next scene, he is wearing the tie. In the scene after that, he is not wearing the tie.

## Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 45%, based on 153 reviews, and an average rating of 4.9/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The Strangers provides a few scares, but offers little else to distinguish itself from other slasher films." Metacritic reported an average score of 47 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B–" on an A+ to F scale.

In 2009, the film was ranked #13 on "Bravo's 13 Scarier Movie Moments" television piece, and in a 2018 retrospective, Clark Collis of Entertainment Weekly deemed the film a "modern-day slasher classic."

Despite the critic's opinions on the film, many horror fans consider this film as a favorite.