Product Description

Inspired by true events, this heart pounding, nail-biting frightener mercilessly explores our most universal fears, where simply opening the door to a stranger leads to a grueling night of terror one could never imagine. Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman star in this relentless suspense thriller that will keep you up at night and make you never want to answer the door again!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5155 in DVD
• Brand: Universal
• Released on: 2008-10-21
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 86 minutes

Amazon.com
A lean, briskly paced and exceptionally creepy thriller, The Strangers earns its scares the old-fashioned way: through atmosphere, sound design, and a simple yet undeniably upsetting central premise that allows for maximum tension throughout its running time. Attractive young lovers Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman are already having a bad day--she's turned down his marriage proposal--before a knock on the door in the middle of the night announces a full-fledged siege on their remote vacation home by a trio of masked assailants. The film's first third delivers the most consistent shivers as the visitors make their presence and intentions known to Tyler; the second half grows more frantic and bloody before a gruesome finale that may leave viewers either rattled to their core or bothered by its empty nihilism. Speedman is fine as the downtrodden male lead (who's seen tucking into a carton of ice cream after being rejected), but it's Tyler who impresses the most by shouldering the lion's share of the terror. First-time writer/director Bryan Bertino impresses by forsaking the current passion for over-the-top violence (save for the finale) in favor of more traditional means of generating fear, and if his project borrows heavily from other films, most notably the French chiller Them (which shares its "inspired by a true story" origin) and Michael Haneke's Funny Games, at least he's taking from the best. The sound design is among the many technical standouts, and the unsettling score by tomandandy (The Hills Have Eyes) pleasantly evokes Ennio Morricone's fuzztone-heavy work for Dario Argento in the early '70s. On a completely unrelated note, LP fanatics should appreciate how both the film's heroes and villains share an affinity for folk and country music on vinyl. --Paul Gaita

Customer Reviews

Easily the scariest movie I have ever seen.....
I recently had watched this movie, and I must say that without question this movie is the scariest, and creepiest movie I have ever seen. In fact it was so scarry that I slept all the lights on the last two nights, and I keep a baseball bat by my night stand.

I am not going to recap the movie ad nauseum the way some of the other reviews here have already done, however I will give a high level perspective of why this movie is so good at being scarry.

1. There are no ghouls, ghosts, vampires, and demons. The premise of this movie is litteraly one group of people taking advantage of other people.

2. The costumes used by the strangers were simple, and eloquent. Exactly the kind of stuff one could pick up at any party store or costume shop. I feel as though this added a whole other level of realism to the movie.

3. Overall creepiness of the type of harrasment the strangers inflicted on the kristen, and james.

Some negatives that I observed about the movie:

1. James and Kristen making some stupid decisions, that would have any person with a brain scratching their heads...ie...splitting up when you have these psychopaths coming at you from all directions.

2. The strangers violating the laws of physics by being able to subtly and quickly sneak into a space and scrawl messages across the walls, windows of a room to further torment our protaganists, and never ever be seen or heard by James and Kristen. This just doesnt seem plausible to me.

3. The ending didnt really give me closure.

With all that, the movie was highly effective at serving its purpose which was to freak me out, and entertain me, which it did for it's entire 80 minute running time.

I highly recommend this movie, and am only giving this movie 4 stars instead of 5 for the reasons I state above.

Noises Within, Noises Without
There are a few flaws in this otherwise successful film that is in fact as frightening as the trailer makes it out to be. Not being one for the constant barrage of thriller films (the 'Saw' Series, the endless vampire variations, 'I know what you did...', etc) this viewer hesitantly watched what could have been yet another exercise in blood and gore. But surprise! The story (based on a true incident in 2005 as outlined by an off camera narrator discussing the number of violent deaths in America each year before the film opens) is tight, credible, and deals more with the emotion of terror of the unknown than images of gore. Kudos to writer/director Bryan Bertino for finding the core of the macabre. And it is true!

James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) is driving his girlfriend Kristen MacKay (Liv Tyler) to the isolated summer home in the woods that James and his best friend Mike (Glenn Howerton) had earlier decorated with rose petals, candles and champagne in preparation for what was supposed to be a celebration of a marriage proposal. Sadness prevails in the car as Kristen has turned James' proposal down. They quietly enter the decorated house, and almost immediately begin to hear sounds outside and a door knock by a young girl apparently looking for a person not living in this house. Kristen asks James to go out and get her cigarettes and the creepy action begins. Three strangers each in masks terrify Kristen with noises, secretly entering the house, and creating a tense atmosphere until James returns. At this point the story becomes an almost unbearable sequence of events: it is clear the strangers are out to murder James and Kristen. Bound and beaten by the three strangers Kristen asks 'Why us? Why do you want to kill us?' and the simple answer from of the strangers is 'Because you're home'. The ending of the film could have been better handled by someone telling us the results of the night - the follow up to this true story. But instead Bertino elects to keep the level of terror high.

Peter Sova (cinematographer) finds the right amount of shadow and dark to keep us guessing and the musical score by tomandandy is pitch perfect. This is a fine little film, but be prepared to jump in a few spots...and keep the lights on! Grady Harp, November 08

Do NOT watch alone...
This atmospheric - and undeniably horrifying - directorial debut from Bryan Bertino gave me the chills unlike any other film that I have seen in a long while.

I won't go into the story, because most of you already know it, but I will tell you this: if you are as jumpy and as easily frightened as I am, do NOT watch this one alone. I made the mistake of doing that the first time, and I couldn't finish it. I had to rent it later on, and watch it with a room full of people in order to see the entire film. The thing that makes the film so effective is simply this: this could happen to anybody. Anybody could break into your home and terrorize you for no reason.

The direction is strong, and Liv Tyler does an excellent job. You can tell that it was definitely inspired by Haneke's FUNNY GAMES, but it's not a rip-off by any means. Bryan Bertino has done an excellent job with his first film, and I look forward to his next film.