Editorials
The Terrifying Pointlessness of ‘The Strangers’
Ever since the invention of motion-picture cameras, filmmakers have been searching the darkest recesses of their brains in an effort to come up with the next great movie monster. From George Romero’s zombies to Wes Craven’s Freddy Krueger, the villains that have most iconically terrorized the silver screen have mostly been creatures quite unlike those found within our physical realities, providing a safe distance from the fear we feel while watching them stalk and slash. When we go to bed, we can pretty sure that we won’t be torn apart in our sleep by a werewolf or feasted on by a hungry vampire, but one thing we cannot promise ourselves is that we’ll be safe from the scariest monsters of them all: the human beings we’re forced to share this planet with.
It is for this reason that no sub-genre of horror is more genuinely terrifying than the home invasion film, which preys upon the very real fear of the safest place in your world being flip-turned into a living nightmare. Countless films released in the last several decades fall under the home invasion umbrella, from 1967’s Wait Until Dark to 2011’s You’re Next, but it wasn’t until Bryan Bertino made his own contribution to the sub-genre that the home invasion film truly reached its pinnacle of terror. Released in 2008, The Strangers upped the fear factor by throwing motive completely out the window.
There’s absolutely nothing deceptive about the simplicity of Bertino’s premise. In The Strangers, James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) and Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler), whose troubled relationship is given a wonderfully nuanced introduction within the first 15-minutes, are spending the night in a remote vacation home. Around four in the morning, they receive a knock on the front door from a young woman who claims to be looking for a friend of hers, and soon thereafter, a trio of masked maniacs break into the home and terrorize the couple. Why, you ask? That’s a question directly addressed in Bertino’s script, and the answer sends chills up the spine just thinking about it.
“Because you were home,” answers one of the masked intruders.
More than merely a creepy tagline, that bone-chilling reveal hammers home the entire theme of The Strangers, which is that sadistic killers don’t need a reason to make you their next target. It’s comforting to believe that you need to wrong someone in order to become their enemy, but the reality, as is terrifyingly on display in The Strangers, is that your peaceful existence can be shattered simply because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And sometimes, as the world learned courtesy of the infamous Manson Family murders of 1969, which loosely inspired Bertino to pen this very film, that wrong place can be within the walls of your own home.
Like the real-life murders of Sharon Tate and friends, there’s really no point to the brutality on display in The Strangers, and though many over the years have criticized the film for that, it is my belief that it’s actually the single most chilling aspect of it. Right out of the gate, a narrated sequence (a nod to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) more or less lays out everything we’re about to see, letting us know that the two characters we’re about to meet will not survive the night. Less than 80-minutes later, as promised, James and Kristen are uneventfully stabbed to death, and just like that, the film ends. No twist. No surprises. When it’s over, we realize there was no point to what we just witnessed, and if the palpable terror of that pointlessness doesn’t linger with you long afterwards, well, it sure does for me.
Everything about The Strangers, very much unlike the majority of modern horror films, is quiet and understated, which is a huge reason why it’s so effective at imparting the fear that it does. In the most chilling moment, Kristen is pouring herself a glass of water in the kitchen while the so-called “Man in the Mask” watches from afar, something we see but Kristen does not. The brief glimpse of the masked madman in the background, which is purposely out of focus, is the visual equivalent of the iconic reveal from When a Stranger Calls that the killer is calling from inside the house, and it’s the complete antithesis of the jump scare that plagues so many horror movies today. By showing us that the killer is inside the house, and then making us wait for him to strike, Bertino imbues the bulk of the film with a tension so thick you can cut it with a butcher’s knife, proving with only his first film that he understands precisely what makes a horror film scary – and it’s sure as hell not creepy images lunging towards the camera.
The Strangers doesn’t make you afraid to venture out into the woods with your friends, nor does it make you fear that your dead loved ones are going to come back from the grave and feast on your flesh. Rather, it makes you afraid of something you simply cannot escape doing each and every night: being in your own home when the sun goes down. Because you never know who might come knocking, and just being home might be enough to get you killed.
Can anything really be scarier than that?
“Elevated Horror.” Of all the combinations in the English language, that one is the most insufferable.
It represents almost a decade of scary movies that, for the most part, took themselves too seriously. Horror responds to the moment, so its “why so serious” lean makes sense as we scuttle through the “worst of times” equation of Charles Dickens’ famous opening lines. But there’s still an opening and a need for a lighter approach; one that not only has fun with its audience but takes the piss out of a genre that is seemingly letting its newfound “respectability” go to its head.
Wes Craven believed devotees see horror films to let out their fears one primal scream at a time. At their core, these movies are roller coasters; they bring us as close to the edge as possible before pulling us back into a safety net of reality. The need for a bigger and badder coaster increases during times when the size of that net decreases.
There’s a thrill that comes from imagining being in a foot race with a madman, or outthinking the hordes of zombies on the other side of the door, plus the scavenger humans coming behind them. There’s even a rush that comes from imagining how one might deal with possession to see good triumph over evil in the end. It’s all about building tension and releasing it through catharsis. That cathartic release usually sounds like screams followed by laughter, which signals relief. Genre heavy hitters over the past 10 years offered very little of that respite when the credits rolled. Films like Hereditary, The Witch, Talk to Me, and even Smile (pick one) keep that tension going after the screen fades to black.
Hereditary
As the genre became obsessed with creating trauma metaphors, that lack of release made sense. Anyone with even a small sample size of traumatic experiences knows those emotions don’t magically resolve themselves in an allotted run time. But how much trauma can one take? Especially when there’s a mess going on outside that few of us can escape from. Movies offer that off-ramp, no matter how short.
Everything can’t be, nor should it be, “elevated.” Audiences need thoughtful explorations of life’s ills via monsters as much as they need murdering masked maniacs with kitchen knives. And no, it doesn’t have to go any deeper than that. Sometimes, a knife is just a knife, and it’s still worth our time and respect. As weird as it sounds, that simplicity is comforting not in spite of the trauma but because of it.
The worst of times should manifest more than just anguish. People need to laugh just as much as they need to think seriously about this moment in time. Even the Scream franchise forgot the meta rock upon which it built its church when the latest foray sacrificed the subtle comedy for serious drama. Scary Movie returned at the perfect moment. It provides the necessary laughs, but it’s not a cure-all.
This isn’t a call for Scary Movie imitators but a return to a mainstream landscape where Killer Klowns from Outer Space sat with The Serpent and the Rainbow, nestled neatly with the latest Nightmare on Elm Street, which took nothing away from The Vanishing.
They Live
Even They Live, John Carpenter’s horror sci-fi satire sandwich, kept its tongue firmly in cheek while discussing serious ideas still relevant in 2026. Yes, a film about aliens taking over the world through subliminal messaging only visible through coded sunglasses is, in fact, a tad silly. Carpenter understood that mainstream horror can’t become so self-important that it never looks itself in the mirror and laughs at that inherent silliness.
The thing is, horror historically excels at poking fun at itself. Most of the Scream franchise, The Cabin in the Woods, or The Blackening show adoration without kowtowing. They recognize tropes and trappings but invert them for an audience already in on the joke, but one that also finds solace in said conventions. This keeps the genre on its toes; once something gets parodied, it’s usually time to evolve. That breeds new ideas and fresh filmmakers, which not only strengthen the genre’s collective voice but also amplify it.
Get Out, as “elevated” as some critics want us to believe it is, is a cathartic, populist scary movie that spoke to an untapped audience rather than speaking down to them. Backrooms is one of the biggest horror hits in years, partially because it’s fine-tuned for modern-day teenagers instead of their parents. Movies like these tell everyone the genre is open for business; open for innovation and, yeah, open for new ways in which people can lovingly poke fun at with a wink and a nudge.
Horror needs dread as much as it needs laughter.
Catharsis is just as important as tension, and pulpy populism has the same merit as more high-brow material. Respectability shouldn’t come at the expense of an experience akin to walking through a haunted house. At a time when joy seems in short supply, horror should look to its past to map out its future, and make things just a tad brighter for audiences.
Backrooms
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