THE STRANGERS - Strange Script

This was another film I was jazzed about. I'm a huge horror fan, and I'd heard great things about Bryan Bertino's script, which was a quarter-finalist in the Nicholl Fellowship competition the Academy puts on.

SPOILERS, SCHMOILERS...

I thought the setup was good -- we got two people deeply in love with each other who have a problem. He proposed and she said no, now it's awkward and they're stuck in a remote vacation home together for the weekend dealing with the consequences.

The first time one of the strangers pops up with a mask on, standing in the background, it scared everybody in the audience. But the film repeats this shot about twenty times, so it quickly loses its impact.

The story suffers from a lot of poor choices. The heroes don't seem particularly intelligent. It's a guy and a girl in a house with a gun. Verus a fat wheezy guy and two seemingly hot girls. Shotgun should win out every time. Even after the hero accidentally kills his friend, there's no reason for him to leave the safety of the closet he's in and give up his advantage.

There are other dopey decisions the hero and heroine make. At one point, they're in their car trying to back out of the driveway and escape. The bad guy's truck rams them from behind. In front of them -- a chick in a mask. What does the hero do? Get out of the car and run. How about running down the asshole in front of you? They're not stronger than a truck.

The guy and girl get into and out of the house so many times, it becomes exhausting to watch and suck all the tension out of the proceedings. There's nothing for them to do other than react in shock every time a masked weirdo shows up; so Bertino tries to give the script some business by having an old CB radio out in the garage. As soon as the heroine gets to it, the bad guys smash it. Not very interesting or unique.

And the script doesn't even have a point at the end -- we watch as the good guy and girl are brutally stabbed. If I'm going to watch someone be terrorized for an hour and a half, I at least want them to kick some ass on the bad guys at some point (the major flaw of FUNNY GAMES as well -- although that sucks worse because the heroine gets her revenge and the director "rewinds" the movie and undoes it).

Smart heroes are always more fun to watch. And how do you make them smart? By having the bad guys do intelligent things that back the heroes into a corner, then the heroes figure a way out of it. Having mundane bad guys do boring things leaves our protagonists simply reacting. And that's not satisfying dramatically.