Oh, the Strangers...

I was absolutely right about you, wasn’t I? You’re just as terrible as your opening minutes suggested you were.

Tonight I finally finished watching The Strangers, and discovered that first impressions are often the best ones. I also discovered that, when deciding which films to watch in the future, the name Bryan Bertino should serve as a disincentive against renting or purchasing any given product.

Picking up where I left off last time, we find James walking out of the house with a shotgun, but instead of heading to the barn to look for the radio, he goes for the Strangers’ truck, hoping that it still has keys, or can be easily hotwired. Neither condition proves to be true, so James is forced to head for the barn. Of course, if he was just going to try to use a car anyway, why not go for David’s, as opposed to the Strangers’? Isn’t that the one at the back of the driveway? Come to think of it, I didn’t see in the opening or ending sequences either… what happened to that car?

Over at the barn, James sees one of the Strangers walking around near the barn, but before he can get up the nerve to shoot her, the male Stranger tackles him from behind. Exit James from the movie.

Worried about her Beau, Kirsten heads out to the barn to look for the radio, and I grow very bored with the proceedings. After all, I know for a fact that her attempts to radio for help won’t be successful, since the film was nice enough to tell me they wouldn’t right at the beginning.

So, long story short (and it’s about time, am I right, people?) James and Kristen wind up getting tied to chairs and stabbed to death. During the run up to this death-stab, Kirsten keeps almost getting away, including a scene where her half-stabbed self gets David’s cell phone and tries to call for help, but has it taken away by one of the Strangers. If you’re wondering why they didn’t use David’s phone hours ago before getting stabbed to death, then you’re looking for sanity in an idiotic movie.

Then we just need to introduce the last relevant characters, the two mormon kids who find the bodies. The film tries for one last shock as a barely-alive Kristen grabs one of the mormon kids’ legs before expiring, but it’s too little, too late. At least the film has the good sense to finally be over once that scene transpires.

One might wonder just how I can be so sure that Kirsten dies in the film, rather than managing to pull through. Well, the answer is twofold – first, when the mormon kid call 911, the first word out of his mouth isn’t ‘Ambulance!’ Second, the beginning stated that the events of that horrible night aren’t fully known, and if she’d survived, they darn well would be!

What makes the opening all the more ridiculous is that it implies that the killers managed to get away with their crimes, which is one of the more laughable endings I’ve come across in a while. Sure, random crimes are committed by ‘strangers’ every day and the crimes are never resolved, but this wouldn’t be one of those cases. Not only do they leave their fingerprints on basically every flat surface in the house, but the Strangers, while leaving the scene of their crime, stop long enough to have a chat with the mormon kids while not wearing their masks.

So the police have lots of fingerprints, and know that three teens (two girls and a boy, two brunettes and a blond) were driving a pick-up truck with a smashed window just a little ways from the place where a number of assailants brutally murdered three people. It’s not going to take the CSI: Miami team to crack this one.

Goodbye Strangers. If we never meet again, it’ll be too soon.