Trick or treat
I suspect the original title of The Strangers — the Liv Tyler/Scott Speedman flick currently in release — was Too Stupid to Live. It was probably changed to attract more unsuspecting viewers. It opens with a chilling voiceover narration: “The following is based on an actual story… There are over 1.3 million violent crimes committed in America each year… Most of the victims, as you are about to see, were too stupid to live...” No, it doesn’t actually say that. But that’s the impression one gets while watching this faux documentary-style “shocker.”
The Strangers belongs to that genre of films the average horror aficionado knows very well: films in which couples not only choose to stay in dark, isolated environments without contact to the outside world, but then proceed to separate and makes themselves easier targets.
Speedman and Tyler (no point in giving their characters names; you won’t get to know them well enough) are miffed at one another, hardly speaking as they drive to Speedman’s old house in the woods for a sleepover after attending a friend’s wedding nearby. We learn that Speedman proposed to Tyler earlier in the evening, but she’s “not ready yet” to marry. Speedman, being a romantic soul, has strewn the old house with rose petals and chilled a bottle of champagne for the occasion. They’re about to celebrate with makeup sex when there’s a knock on the door… at 4 a.m.
Now, I don’t know about you all, but I find it suspicious when someone comes knocking at 4 a.m. But Tyler disengages herself from Speedman and proceeds to open the big wooden door without so much as a “Who is it?”
Stuff like this is the mark of a true T.S.T.L. (Too Stupid to Live) classic.
Obviously not weirded out by a stranger at the door who keeps asking “Is Tamara home?” then disappears just as mysteriously into the surrounding woods, Speedman takes off in his car to buy cigarettes, leaving Tyler alone in the creepy house (T.S.T.L. error number two).
Naturally, Tyler is besieged by mask-wearing psychos who rap loudly on the door and write messages on her windows (like “hello” several times in red lipstick — well, at least they’re friendly psychos). She plugs her dead cell phone into a power outlet near a fireplace, then stupidly leaves it there, wandering around the dark house, courting further trouble. (Her cell phone gets tossed into the fireplace flames.) She makes T.S.T.L. Tactical Error No. 47 by climbing into a slatted closet, obviously forgetting what we’ve all learned from watching Halloween and Blue Velvet. When Speedman returns, he scoffs at her obvious bug-eyed terror, and insists “there’s no one here.” So naturally they just wander around the house some more, waiting to die. Later, Speedman tells Tyler to “hide somewhere in the house” while he heads to the barn across the yard to look for a wireless radio. So, of course, she steps out onto the porch instead.
Most of the camera angles in this exploitative flick are familiar to horror movie buffs. It’s the “killer’s eye view” shot from some hidden location (hidden from the protagonist, anyway), aligning us squarely with the psycho’s viewpoint. It’s a cliché of such films, and The Strangers does nothing new or interesting with it. I admit, I thought the movie trailer looked “scary” because it seemed to evoke shock horror classics from the 1970s, when being scared was a lot less deconstructionist. Here, the technique amounts to the kind of sick voyeurism that gives horror a bad name these days. And the main sin of T.S.T.L. films is this: we give up on rooting for the main characters, because all the camera angles and cinematic touches point us to the inevitable conclusion that these two bozos are gonna die.
It’s worth contrasting this schlock-fest with Michael Haneke’s remake of his own disturbing 1997 film, Funny Games. The 2007 remake stars Naomi Watts, Tim Roth and Michael Pitt as, respectively, an upscale husband and wife and a drifting lunatic in white tennis gear who play out a similar cat-and-mouse game inside a lakefront house. Pitt plays young Paul, with a similarly blonde, bland friend, Peter (Brady Corbet), who pretend to be staying with lakefront neighbors (who the pair have actually already killed). Peter is sent to borrow an egg from Anna (Naomi Watts), but his suspicious behavior sets off Anna’s alarm bells. She refuses a second egg when Paul purposely drops the first, and her lack of neighborly “politeness” sets off the two psychopaths, who swiftly take over the household, disabling George (Tim Roth) with a golf club to the leg. They hold the couple and their young son hostage, engaging in philosophical chitchat about the demise of civilization and the meaninglessness of random evil.
Of course, the film seems to fall under the T.S.T.L. category (we can’t believe Roth would take all this lying down, busted leg or not), yet Watts’ strong acting lifts her from being a bland, lip-trembling victim (unlike Liv Tyler), and we actually do want her to rescue the family from two living embodiments of pure evil who have inexplicably chosen her home to play out their bizarre amusements.
The only trouble is, Haneke is way too familiar with Hollywood horror thrillers to let us — the audience — off the hook so easily. Setting Funny Games in the US instead of his native Germany, he seems to be commenting on the rise of torture film franchises (Saw, Hostel) and the audiences who salivate for them. Haneke’s camera plays from different angles, neither committing to the psychos’ P.O.V. nor aligning itself with the besieged family. It just kind of hovers around the action, leaving us powerless to do anything but watch. At one or two points, he has Paul break the camera’s “fourth wall” and address the audience directly, asking them to bet on the fate of the couple (“I mean, what do you think? You think they stand a chance? Well, you’re on their side, aren’t you? Who are you betting on, hmm?”). Haneke, as with his original version, wants the audience to realize that violence is terrible, shocking, and often meaningless, and that there’s not much we can do about it, apparently. Conditioned by decades of Hollywood “revenge” scenarios — in which the fallen hero gets up and exacts brutal retribution — we find ourselves as literally disabled as George or his bound-and-gagged wife, watching the misery unfold. Perversely, Haneke even cuts away from any explicit violence — preferring to deny us even those voyeuristic kicks. Even more perversely, when the tables seem to turn and Anna manages to shoot Paul, Peter petulantly searches for the TV’s remote control and simply “rewinds” the action we are watching. Back to square one.
Haneke’s 1997 film was a classic of its kind, previewing the level of sadism that would come to dominate the horror film market (mostly made up of young males) a decade later. By allowing the evil Beavis and Butt-head to dominate, the film actually forces you to take a position on their actions. The Funny Games remake, in the end, is not much better than the average T.S.T.L. film (though it makes you despise the villains even more, because there’s no cathartic payback). And as much as it wants us to transcend such voyeuristic viewing, it kind of plays upon a similar form of manipulation, forcing us to confront our own desire for violence, revenge and cheap thrills even as it denies us more of the same.
