Review of The Strangers - only scary for those with no self-defense skills


 


Review of The Strangers

2008

To put it bluntly, this is a great movie for all the ways to NOT do good self-defense.
A husband and wife ( and later the brother ) are at a family home in a fairly isolated area. The movie recounts a harrowing and terrifying night for the couple with lots of drama, fear, jump scares and all the usual makings of a bad guy, home invasion type movie. Halloween, this isn't. 

There are so many failures in this movie and here are a few.

1. In the beginning of the movie, it is 4:00 in the morning, the couple has returned from a party after a bad argument and they are tired, worn and emotionally raw. 
" KNOCK" on the door.  They both look at each other like...Who could that be ? 
They go to the door and open it. No checking around, no peephole and the porch light is out that was on a few minutes ago. The young girl says " Is Tamara here?" in a halting, slow to respond voice. When they say no, she says... " I'll be seeing you". 
There is a ton of freight to this short interaction. Is this girl acting like someone who is lost? Why would she say " I'll be seeing you?". 
At this point in the movie the couple close the door and act like it was routine and no security escalation was needed. They later discover the porch light is unscrewed...someone deliberately unscrewed it. 
At this point my wife and I are yelling at the TV !

2. The husband leaves to go get cigarettes and leaves the wife home alone. While alone one of the strangers enters the house and you see him in standing menacing in the background. The wife just goes about her routine, not a care in the world, not looking around, no situational awareness, no intuition kicking off.  

3. Over the course of an hour(?) the strangers cut some phone lines, bang on the door, close a flew on the chimney, and again, the wife just descends into fear and paranoia but not once grabbing a knife, checking locks, going into a defensive position. What does she do? Call the husband..." come home"

4. The man comes home, she tries to convince him and he thinks she's imagining things and ignores HER intuition (  a not  uncommon occurrence )  and it takes a major escalation for him to proclaim " we need to get out of here". Ya think?!?

5. There is no defensive thinking. One of the strangers chops through the front door and they have opportunity there. A stranger suddenly appears at a window while the wife has a knife and she could have easily used that opportunity. 

6. There is a silly plot line to go  out ' to the barn' to try a ham radio and call for assistance and of course, they split up. Why would you do that? Stay together, to watch each others back. 

7. In the end they are both tied up, the husband is stabbed to death and dies slowly. The wife is stabbed and survives. It's billed as loosely based on true events but Wikipedia reports it's based on the Manson family murders and some break-in's from the producers childhood neighborhood. 

In conclusion, this might be a scary story for those with no self defense skills but for those that have them, infuriating at their stupidity. 

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