The Strangers (2008)

I watched the film 'The Strangers' and I loved the film, although it's a horror I didn't get that scared but I feel this is because some things are predictable and I've seen so many I've become accustomed to what typically happens in horror movies. This film is able to keep a viewer on the edge of their seat, there are so many moments where you feel sorry for the victims in the film. The best part of the movie to me is keeping the villains faced masked right up until the last moments of the movie. This was affective to me because it's better seeing a masked villain as their identity is hidden and in a way it makes it more scary and makes you want to watch the film till the end just to find out who is behind the mask.

On the movie poster, the line at the top says 'because you were home', this ties in with what the movie was based on. The director Bryan Bertino said "As a kid, I lived in a house on a street in the middle of nowhere. One night, while our parents were out, somebody knocked on the front door and my little sister answered it. At the door were some people asking for somebody who didn't live there. We later found out that these people were knocking on doors on the area and, if no one was home, breaking into the houses". In this film it reflects the events that happened to the director in his childhood but then again it's the opposite. As they were home they were targeted which is different from Bryan Bertino, it seems that because they were in the house, they were targeted the whole night and became victims to the villains.

This movie subverted and conformed to the conventions of a horror movie at the same time. The subversion was typically there is one killer/villain whereas in this movie there were three and also there was two female villains and one male. Typically in horror movies, the villain happens to be male but this time there were two females and one male. Although there are two females, the male was still able to dominate the females and he was the leader of them. From the poster the masks for the women only cover their face but illustrates to an audience that one has blonde hair and one has short black hair. The male has a sack mask over his whole entire head leaving no clues as to what he looks like or his hair. Even in the movie when the blonde woman first appeared, her face was hidden from viewers with the use of low lighting so it was hard to make out her identity. It also had conventions of horror such as isolated settings. Isolated settings make it easier for danger to be present as there's no one around to help or even communicate with. A lot of the movie was filmed in the night which makes it more scary as it's dark and easier for characters to pop up and make an audience jump as they wouldn't expect it.

One of my favourite scenes was at the end of the movie where all the villains took it in turns to stab the two main characters. This was one of my favourite scene for several reasons. One reason being that blood and weapons were shown which are iconography of horror. The weapon used was a knife and it was intense to watch them slowly stabbing the victims. The villains got pleasure out of seeing their victims suffer and that made the film even better for me as a viewer who can't believe someone could be so evil. At the end there was a twist where we thought both the victims had died but the main girl survived which was not expected. I didn't jump but it was a shock and she appeared to be the final girl, surviving over her husband who died. I think it was good that she survived because the final girl theory could be applied, she got stabbed several times and still had the strength to survive.