The Strangers

While hanging out with Jeremy and his friends the other night, we rented The Strangers, one of the horror movies from this past year that I had most wanted to see but never got around to doing so. If you're not familiar with the plot, it's basically a variant of that found in Funny Games: a couple is at a vacation home and gets terrorized by some creepy intruders who mess with them a lot before presumably killing them. The biggest difference here (superficially at least), is that in The Strangers the villains all wear creepy masks, one of which isn't too unlike the Scarecrow mask from Batman Begins.

Anyway, despite my high hopes for this movie and some moderately well-realized creepy moments, the film just didn't really pan out all that well. Don't get me wrong, the acting, cinematography, and look/feel were all pretty spot on, but ultimately the movie failed to connect over its brief 88 minutes, leaving me feeling a bit unsatisfied at its abrupt conclusion. Still, this movie was way better than most of the horror movies coming out these days, but it still couldn't quite compete with the similar Funny Games. Oh well.