I just finished watching The Strangers. I’m not sure I’d call that enjoyable, although it was a pretty intense way to kick off the new year.
Scott Tobias calls it “mostly psychological torture porn” — and that’s mostly admiringly — whereas Roger Ebert suggests that the movie “does what it sets out to do. I’m not sure that it earns the right to do it.”
I’m somewhere in the middle. I accept that I can admire a film and find it effective, while still not really liking it, and while wishing it had something more to offer. The Strangers really doesn’t have more to offer — although its subdued opening act and nuanced direction suggest that its director’s next film just might.
Although, given that his next project is a ghost story by the writer of the Jim Carrey horror movie The Number 23… At least he didn’t sign on for the planned The Strangers 2.