The Strangers is a one-trick pony. And though for a while it makes for a good ride, it ultimately wears itself out well before the finish line.
It's been a long time coming for Bryan Bertino's home-invasion horror flick The Strangers. Shot way back in late 2006, the movie sat on the shelf for what seemed like an eternity as it awaited a firm release date. In the meantime, two films with similar concepts, Vacancy and Funny Games, came and went, 
robbing The Strangers of much of its novelty. Which is a shame, because the movie isn't actually half-bad.
The premise of The Strangers is simple yet effective: An attractive young couple, James (Scott Speedman) and Kristen (Liv Tyler), drive out to the countryside for a short getaway at a secluded family vacation home. Initially meant to be a celebratory occasion, the night has been rendered bittersweet by a rejected marriage proposal and the ensuing anxiety that it causes. The couple's tension quickly turns to terror, however, when a mysterious girl knocks on their door at four in the morning, asking for someone named Tamara.
Thus begins a seemingly random -- yet well-coordinated -- campaign of harassment by three masked strangers. They begin somewhat innocently, banging on the front door and rattling the windows, gradually escalating their game of psychological torture until it becomes apparent to James and Kristen that their masked assailants don't intend for them to live through the night. With their lines of communication cut and their only means of transportation destroyed, they attempt to devise a plan to escape before time runs out.
The Strangers' concept is a genuinely terrifying one, especially for those of us who grew up in the relatively sheltered confines of the suburbs, but it ultimately 
loses its momentum after a while. While the first half of the film is really scary -- in a psychological, Hitchcockian sort of way -- the scares wear thin when it becomes apparent that the story has nowhere to go.
I found myself actually hoping for some kind of plot twist -- just to change things up and inject some new energy into the storyline. Writer/director Bertino didn't necessarily need to go all M. Night Shyamalan on us, but it would have been nice if he saved a few tricks up his sleeve for the third act. But he remains stubbornly committed to his original formula. The attacks are genuinely random; we never learn much about the The Strangers' villains other than the fact that two of them are women and the other is apparently asthmatic.
The producers of The Strangers must have recognized this, as the movie sprints to the finish line with a running time of barely 80 minutes. Sadly, it runs out of gas well before the closing credits.
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