Editorials
“Because You Were Home”: 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 memorably 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 be pretty sure that we won’t be torn apart in our sleep by a werewolf or feasted on by a thirsty vampire. Freddy isn’t likely to get us either.
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 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. 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. Truly *scary*.
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?
Note: A version of this article was originally published on May 5, 2016.
Horror was thriving so well in the 1980s that movies like Pen Densham’s The Kiss (1988) would understandably get lost in the shuffle, only to then gain their fans later on in life. Even still, this one Canadian-American curio has had a more challenging time than others, as far as contemporary reevaluations go, which is very likely due to the movie’s limited availability—at least as of this write-up.
However, the scarceness of The Kiss, while a bit annoying, makes it like catnip for ‘80s horror completists everywhere. Hopefully, a lot of them will walk away satisfied after watching this hidden gem.
Even though The Kiss was intended as the first of several horror collaborations between Astral Pictures and TriStar, as well as the first feature produced by Densham, Richard B. Lewis and John Watson’s Trilogy Entertainment Group, it ended up being the only one produced from that former union. Once the movie was released, TriStar’s distribution jitters—they opted for a regional rollout—did the $6-million flick no favors. TriStar’s cold feet toward horror releases have been well noted, but The Kiss still did a tad better than Night of the Creeps (1986), another genre outing that flopped due to its regional opening.
Shot in Montreal, but set in Albany, New York, The Kiss—which was still called The Host just a few months before its October premiere—concerns an average middle-class family and their forthcoming situation. The uncanny problem in store for them was, in fact, set in motion some years earlier. As that hot and dusty flashback to the Belgian Congo shows, a familial curse was set upon the two Dunbar sisters well before Meredith Salenger’s teenage character was born.
Meredith Salenger, Nicholas Kilbertus and Mimi Kuzyk in The Kiss
The Kiss, which was based on a story by co-writer Stephen Volk (Ghostwatch) and penned by both Volk and Tom Ropelewski, has the outward appearance of The Stepfather (1987). This movie, though, is anything but a gender-flipped retread of that classic domestic disturber. For starters, The Kiss is far less grounded in reality—that much is clear from its unsettling opening scene. There, a trusting girl (Priscilla Mouzakiotis) is the victim of her own deceptive aunt (Céline Lomez); the movie’s titular act, and the story’s first shock, becomes the means of transferring an ancient evil from one host to another.
In the present day, Salenger’s role of Amy Halloran, a religious schoolgirl, is dealt a harsh blow in life once her mother, Hilary Halloran née Dunbar (Pamela Collyer), suddenly dies in a freak accident. But rather than a complete stranger sweeping the Halloran widower (Nicholas Kilbertus) off his feet some months later, Joanna Pacula’s character is that chosen temptress. Here, Pacula plays the grown-up version of the afflicted girl last seen in the movie’s opener. Since Amy’s mother is insistent about there being no reunion between estranged sisters, and she even contemplates buying a gun shortly before her tragic demise, it’s presumable that Aunt Felice poses a threat to her family.
The Kiss isn’t a movie ever too concerned about its own predictability. The audience is indeed often one step ahead of the story here, but also keep in mind how every one of those steps is loud. Take, for instance, the death of Amy’s mother; the Halloran matriarch goes out in garish, gruesome fashion, as a supernaturally commandeered truck sends Collyer’s character through a store window first, then leaves her one leg short. The directorial enthusiasm truly comes out in horrific moments such as these.
The Kiss is always sure to revel in its characters’ ills and misfortunes. So if the plot doesn’t impress, then its lurid parts should. Amy’s mother’s exit scene was proof of an eager, first-time horror director proving his worth. Then, bestie Heather (Sabrina Boudot) survives to tell the tale of a bizarre escalator mishap that, despite showing relatively less gore, spikes viewers’ empathy meter. The wilder bits of this movie, however, commence with that inevitable hookup between Felice and Amy’s bewitched father; their kitchen coitus is paralleled by Amy’s feverish classroom terror. The outcome there is a disquieting cross-cut of sex magic and a young woman’s menstrual onset plus hallucinations.
Sabrina Boudot in The Kiss
From foam appliances to bladders, that parade of special effects in The Kiss casts its own spell on the audience. Felice’s familiar, a visibly malevolent cat, was realized here with several models, some more articulate than others. Admittedly, the demon cat’s not as convincing as most of the effects here, but accepting that artifice, as opposed to fighting it, will make the whole experience way more enjoyable. As for the makeup used to manifest Felice’s inner villainy, it is more minimal and subtle than one might like; yet the work done to turn Pacula into an antithesis of herself is nonetheless compelling.
The otherworldly perils and dreadful goings-on wouldn’t work half as well as they do in The Kiss without the story’s contrast effect. Finding frights in picturesque, extremely ordinary settings was something that took off in the ‘80s, thanks to that sweeping shift to locales like the suburbs. And Amy’s home, a replica of a real Montreal suburban house, is the ideal battleground for any proper good-versus-evil story. It’s also prime real estate for this movie’s satanic panic-inspired horrors.
Because of their ostensibly similar plots, The Kiss has been compared to The Exorcist (1973). Except in Densham’s movie, the sinister, non-Christian entity targeting a teen girl lies within something less apparent and, perhaps, more devastating upon its exposure. To an outsider, Pacula’s Aunt Felice is too beautiful and unobjectionable to ever suspect of being a monster. More suspicious is how quickly she rips into the fabric of the Halloran home. Felice’s mere presence upsets the “texture of family life,” according to the director.
The demon cat in The Kiss
Taking out Amy’s mother and best friend, and distracting her father, would suggest The Kiss is playing by a different set of rules. It is initially leaving its adolescent target unsupported in a rather grim scenario. In contrast, though, this story offers up a surrogate parent who does her best to fill in the holes of Amy’s eroding home life. Mimi Kuzyk does good work as that family friend and doctor, Brenda, who guides the lost child without also steering her in any one direction; she is naturally skeptical of Amy’s accusations until it’s almost too late to do anything about them. So although The Kiss does an admirable job of undoing the main character’s support system, it never leaves her without a lifeline. This dark movie, in spite of everything that’s transpired, doesn’t deprive itself of light and hope.
The Kiss is a potent mélange of familiar ideas. If not for the director’s surprise flair for horror, though, the movie would have been less effective. What a shame that Pen Densham didn’t continue with the genre. As for Joanna Pacula, she is, too, owed credit as the wicked vixen opposite Meredith Salenger’s pitiable Amy; she never fails to be unsettling in her role. Pacula makes Aunt Felice a sexy yet intimidating character.
For horror that steadily doles out madness and menace, while also delivering a flashy and ghastly conclusion, The Kiss is certain to please. Yes, it’s cheesy all the way, but most favorably, everyone involved plays everything straight. That kind of commitment goes a long way with this movie.
The Kiss
You must be logged in to post a comment.