Contemporary Cult: The Strangers (2008)

Is Tamara here?

I didn't grow up reading Danny Peary's Cult Movies books and I'm not of the following generation who created podcasts inspired by them - though I listen to and love those podcasts. Folks of my half-generation need our own canon of contemporary cult cinema. It's time for us to define our "classics, sleepers, weird and wonderful," as Peary puts it. We'll debate the definition of a "cult movie" by stretching the boundaries, make predictions about a film's future cultability, and honor a new generation of artists in this new, on-going series called Contemporary Cult. 

Some editions of Contemporary Cult will be for paid subscribers, while others will be unlocked for all. This one if free, but make sure to sign up here to receive all editions as they come out. 

All movie lovers experience The Showing, the act of showing a movie you care about to someone you care about. Before The Showing, you try to drum up interest so that they'll take the time to sit on the couch, but not too much interest that you'll set expectations too high. The Showing is how cult movies become cult movies.

I've been on both the giving and receiving end of The Showing and it's a miserable experience either way. You're either the show-er, overcompensating for laughs while watching the other person(s) out of the corner of your eye. Even if they do seem to be enjoying themselves, you'll say things in your head like, "Sure, they seem to like it, but do they like it the way that I like it?" On the receiving end, you feel a similar pressure to perform, hoping you laugh at all the right times, don't pick up on the twist too early, or, God forbid, check the time without realizing what you're doing.

In high school, I seemed to strike out almost every time on the showing end of The Showing. Years later, I discovered that Nine Dead is actually a terrible movie and maybe Hedwig and the Angry Inch was more of a me thing than a them thing, but I will never forgive the boys for their response to The Strangers. It's a film that I first watched alone, in a dark and quiet room, totally spooked. I was so excited to show them a genuinely terrifying movie. I wish I would've received a "meh" response, but instead, I received a Mystery Science Theater 3000-style heckle, complete with jeers, jabs, and juvenile jokes - the Man in the Mask was not-so-endearingly referred to as Sack Guy, a joke fit for any fourteen-year-old boy.

I've felt the need to stand up for the movie ever since. I suppose that's what led me to write this column in the first place.

I was pleased to later find out that The Strangers has a cult following, one that sees the titular strangers appear at horror conventions (It's an easy costume! When I worked at a movie theater, I kinda ripped it off for a Batman costume contest where I went as the Scarecrow from Batman Begins. Some guy called me out on it,) and annual trick-or-treating.

It's that cult following that got the film a sequel (The Strangers: Prey at Night) ten years later and a standalone, already completed trilogy (The Strangers: Chapters 1, 2, and 3) that seem to be finding their way to movie theaters as I write this, with the first entry having just come out a few weeks ago. When that entire trilogy has been released, there will have been more Strangers films since the first film's release than Halloween entries, the same amount of movies as the Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Scream franchises combined. But as these films continue to roll out while somehow missing the point more than the last one did, it just makes the original film look better and better.

The premise is simple: mysteriously masked strangers terrorize a couple at their remote lake house. Terrorize is the operative word here as they don't kill them right away. They stalk them. Scare them. Make their presence known and get a kick out of doing it. The couple (Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) doesn't even come close to death until the final reel. For the strangers, the killing is just the cherry on top.

It's particularly easy to catch this couple off-guard because their minds are elsewhere. Having just returned from a friend's wedding, Speedman did that douchebag thing where he tries to steal all the attention and uses this opportunity to propose himself. We're not exactly sure why she turned him down (maybe she was so ungodly embarrassed that he believes such a thing is socially acceptable) and the reason doesn't particularly matter - all that matters is that the rose-petal-laden, candle-lit pre-prepared home now feels awkward and uncomfortable.

But that's just fortunate luck for the strangers. When Liv Tyler begs for an explanation in her climatic, end-of-life plea, her "Why are you doing this to us?" is met with the iconic line, "Because you were home." Wrong house, wrong time. It's as simple as that.

And it's that simple, bare-bones style that makes the film so chilling. First-time filmmaker Bryan Bertino lets his film sit and wait while the tension builds. He is as patient as the strangers. He, just like them, has no interest in killing for the sake of killing. (That's something that his penned sequel misses entirely. Spoilers for a disappointing movie that I've given plenty of chances: When the parents are off-ed relatively early, it seems counterintuitive to the first film's ethos.) Moments linger, single shots hold for much longer than usual. You watch the strangers watch them. It's torturous, but not in the gross-out torture porn kinda way. The film actually contains little violence - it's all psychologically torturous.

They arrive at the home, victim-proof the premises, do some spooking (if the sequels are any indication, their go-to line seems to be "Is Tamara home?" which she, of course, never is), and eventually up their own ante in both the home invasion and horror departments. That's why I find home invasion the scariest of horror's subgenres. I will never be attacked by a bloodsucking demon or be stupid enough to continue living in a haunted house, but I sure as shit could be murdered in my own home by a random assailant. And I can't tell which image is more haunting: the violation or the violence.

Upon a recent grown-up revisit, I wrote, "It definitely didn’t hold up for me like I wanted it to. It’s much more of a movie for 12-year-old me to discover nihilism than the much more educated viewer that I am today, but it still holds a special nostalgic place in my heart. And still scares me." In the time since, it's only gotten better and better in my estimation, and my feelings on it now more closely resemble my first watch. As these falling-flat sequels keep coming, this one just keeps aging wonderfully.