Bollywood Adda

Cast: Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman

Director: Bryan Bertino

As far as horror movies go, The Strangers is a pretty decent one.

Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman play a young unmarried couple who decide to spend the night at his parents' middle-of-nowhere house in the woods. But what was planned to be a romantic evening turns out to be quite the tragic one when masked strangers come knocking in the dark of the night.

The film, that's been described as "inspired by real events", is an old fashioned spooky movie which doesn't depend on violent stabbings and blood-splattered killings to give you the scares (although there's a little of both in this film); instead it sets the mood for terror through suspenseful silence which is broken only by the sounds of the scratchy record that keeps going on mysteriously, the threatening knocks and bangs on the door, and of course by Tyler's petrified piercing screams.

For the most part, the film unfolds in real time, so it often feels excruciatingly slow, but that seems to be exactly what the filmmakers were going for, because when the action finally starts you're plunged right into it.

What's interesting about this film is that the audience gets to see things that the characters don't - so long before Tyler knows there's another person in the room, we've seen the stranger already, and we know something bad is going to happen. It's moments like these that suck you into the film's drama completely.

Despite the lame-ass ending, it's a film I recommend you do watch - and watch it in the cinema, because it's the experience of watching it as a collective audience that makes it such fun. I'll go with three out of five for The Strangers; this one's really for hard-core horror-movie fans and for those who have enough patience to let a film reveal itself slowly, rather than show you all its cards at once. Go with a big group of friends, that's the best way to enjoy it.

Rating: 3 / 5 (Good)

by ibnlive.com