I must say just the sheer plea of the woman being held hostage from the trailer she says something like 'Why are you doing this to us?' and the reply is 'because you were home'.

Very simple but so freaky.

i have just got home after seeing it

if you are easily spooked miss this one out, everyone in the cinema was screaming most of the time

its more psycological than gore

it should have been an 18

Good film. Can understand the comparisons to Vacancy but IMO, its everything Vacancy wasnt. Vacancy lacked everything, action, suspense etc.. but The Strangers had it all. Great use of music and timing. The "Strangers" were well played. The only thing that annoyed me was the bitches in the back row screaming at every little thing....... Liv Tyler was very good too ^_^

Well I watched it on my computer screen, and it was jumpy enough, God knows what i'd have been like in the cinema haha.

 

I thought it was quite good though. A female lead gives it that much more claustraphobic feel, and I feel the plot was a bit what OFF THE RADAR, it was still really good. One of the best touches to the film was how throughout everything, you never see the people behind the masks. Some parts were really predictable though, I could seem them a MILE off. But maybe then that's just down to me having seen so many horror films. :lol:

It's a damn good film, don't get me wrong, and it does deal with the sorts of themes and anxieties which are at the core of people's psyches, and Home Invasions DO happen, but really, this is just a bit of an American re-telling of the French film "Ils" in a lot of ways, only that film was a bit more realistic and less obviously fictional if you get my meaning....

 

I liked 'Ils/Them' a lot - tho wasnt gonna bother with this unless anybody else wanted to see it (in the guardian even babylon ad got a better review than this!!!)

But that is based on true events.... the killings of Ed Gein.... who did make things out of peoples body parts.

 

Yeah, BASED.... VERY loosely at that mate, Ed Gein was a loner, he didn't have a whole family killing people and processing them into meat.... You could even argue, more convincingly actually, that "Psycho" is BASED upon the Ed Gein case too.... You know, freaky, mother-obsessed loner... Norman Bates is a far more obvious cinematic surrogate for Ed Gein than Leatherface and Co who are clearly exaggerated constructs....

 

 

 

Good film. Can understand the comparisons to Vacancy but IMO, its everything Vacancy wasnt. Vacancy lacked everything, action, suspense etc.. but The Strangers had it all. Great use of music and timing. The "Strangers" were well played. The only thing that annoyed me was the bitches in the back row screaming at every little thing....... Liv Tyler was very good too ^_^

 

Yeah, Vacancy is cr@p tbh..... I got absolutely no sense of fear or dread at all with that film, and frankly, I couldn't have cared less about the characters in that film... This film however, is a different kettle of fish... You actually feel something for the characters, you feel their pain, their fear, and hope they'll get out alive, but in the pit of your gut you just know it wont end well, but that doesn't take anything away from it.... The "strangers" themselves are quite frightening... The voice of "pin-up girl" makes her sound hollow and dead inside, like she's really just a doll, not human; and then you have the deafening pounding at the door, which recalls Robert Wise's "The Haunting"... The use of sound in this film to create mood and evoke terror is absolutely suberb....

 

I got the feeling from the closing line "It'll be easier next time" that we may be heading for a franchise.... God, I really hope not, that would just ruin the whole effect because any sequel would feel obliged to bring in some motive or some ludicrously contrived characterisation for the Strangers (you know the drill, abused by mummy and daddy, torturing small animals, yadda, yadda), which would ruin the whole point of these characters NOT actually being 'people' as such at all.. "The Strangers" should remain a one-off....

(you know the drill, abused by mummy and daddy, torturing small animals, yadda, yadda

Halloween remake anyone? :lol:

 

Unfortunately... A sequel has been confirmed... just pray that Bryan Bertino can actually do it some justice... I notice some mistakes though... Or at least i think they were mistakes which just makes the film far more creepy e.g.

after the girl knocks on the door for the second time, Kirsten locks the door BUT when she first sees the 1st stranger, on the other side of the window, the door is opened from the outside... Now i dunno if that means that the there is another Stranger inside the house or if its just a mistake....

Creepy aint it :P

This film seriously plays with your mind... Windows will no longer be the same :lol:

I watched it on my computer and it made Baby Jesus cry.

It was so....$h!t lol. I swear it took for the loading bar of the WHOLE film to get just about

halfway before anything ACTUALLY happened. p*** weak.

 

Them makes me smile so much though. Maybe it is because of that.

The fact that there is absolutely NO reason, NO motive behind what these people do just makes it all the more terrifying... It's the sheer randomness of it all, that it could happen to anyone...

IMO that would make it worse, but i haven't seen it but hopefully i will in a few months when its on SKY Box Office.

It was so....$h!t lol. I swear it took for the loading bar of the WHOLE film to get just about

halfway before anything ACTUALLY happened. p*** weak.

 

That's what used to be known as "creating mood and tension" back in the days when Horror films were actually worthy of the name and not just computer games for babies who have the attention-spans of goldfish..... :rolleyes:

 

Sorry to be nasty, but seriously, watch any Horror film from about the 70s or 80s, and you'll see the very deliberate and slow building up of tension which reaches a crescendo.... Makes the actual horror all the more, well, horrible, when it does occur.... Films that merely rely on nothing but gore, gore and more gore tend to be dull and have nowhere to really go.....

 

That's what used to be known as "creating mood and tension" back in the days when Horror films were actually worthy of the name and not just computer games for babies who have the attention-spans of goldfish..... :rolleyes:

 

Sorry to be nasty, but seriously, watch any Horror film from about the 70s or 80s, and you'll see the very deliberate and slow building up of tension which reaches a crescendo.... Makes the actual horror all the more, well, horrible, when it does occur.... Films that merely rely on nothing but gore, gore and more gore tend to be dull and have nowhere to really go.....

 

Howwww rude.

 

It doesn't even build tension; it's just a waste of time. I have better things to do personally than pay about £20 in total at a cinema, to watch a film where f*** all happens. Period.

 

I'm talking like House of 1000 Corpses though - What other films do you know that are like that!? Because that film made me super happy lol (:.

I saw this on saturday, I enjoyed it :D

 

Oh and there was an advert for saw 5 just before it started too :lol:

This must be the only film released in the last 5 years that is actually scary. I liked it, although there is no plot and the ending is pretty awful.

This must be the only film released in the last 5 years that is actually scary. I liked it, although there is no plot and the ending is pretty awful.

 

Oh I agree on the ending. It confused me quite a lot even though it really shouldn't have done. I'm sure the writers just put it in for that EXTRA SHOCK VALUE though. Even though it was a tad weird and left me thinking WTF after i'd seen the film.

This has c**p reviews generally.

I'm downloading it now, gonna watch it with mates tomorrow, hoping its good.

Really good film, best scares i've had in quite a while!

Sorry to be nasty, but seriously, watch any Horror film from about the 70s or 80s, and you'll see the very deliberate and slow building up of tension which reaches a crescendo.... Makes the actual horror all the more, well, horrible, when it does occur.... Films that merely rely on nothing but gore, gore and more gore tend to be dull and have nowhere to really go.....

I'm so inexperienced :P . I've watched just one horror film that lets us get to know the characters: White Noise. Its not the best film in the world because of the ending, but its refreshing at the start because its more like a mystery with a dark theme and starts all happy, has bad event happen but isn't exaggerated and doesn't try to scare you from the get go.

It was alright.

 

I've seen worse.