The Strangers might be the shittest film I’ve ever seen…

…and I’ve seen Reign of Fire!

Really. Dumb does not cover it. Calling this film dumb is like calling John Merrick “not much of a looker” or Richard Littlejohn “a wanker” – they just don’t do their subjects justice (1).

This film was so dumb that I felt my IQ rise as I watched it.

This film was so dumb that Scary Movie came in, watched 10 minutes and left sighing about the ruin of modern cinema.

This film was so totally and completely dumb that I wanted time to run backwards, at the risk of losing my IQ rise, just so I could ensure I had never had the very real shame of watching it staining my soul.

And after dumb it was shit. Really shit. It was a movie where logic was not only torn out, line by line, nerve connection by nerve connection, but also then dressed up as Rasputin so it could be poisoned, shot, beaten and finally drowned. The ‘talent’ (some bloke I’ve never heard of who could be anyone of a gaggle of Hollywood leading men and Liv Tyler who simpered her lines through the film like she had been told her character was made of nothing but flowers and bunny burps) were moved around the set simply to allow the director to place them in one scary (cough) situation after another with fuck all regard to the obviously old fashioned and over-used concepts of plot and narrative (logic, as discussed, already having been done away with presumably before the writer set crayon to paper).

Take the following as some examples of this films total and all-encompassing shitness, although it’s by no means a full list as my mind has wiped bits of it from my memory – in some cases as I saw them:

a) Why did the women (Liv Tyler) never put any shoes on? Despite the fact she got changed at the start when things started to get scary. What kind of idiot decides “Ooo, there appears to be a potential rapist and/or murderer outside my house. I will get out of this dress and into some jeans but you know what? I’ll not bother with footwear – after all, it’s not like I’ll have to run for my life, is it?”

b) You know when your mobile battery dies and you can’t use your phone so you have to plug it in to charge it, right? Does that mean you then can not use that phone? No? No? Thought so – mine works just fine with main power too. What an absolute pity that hers seemed to be a special phone that did not. After all, it would have saved a lot of heartache (mine in particular) had she been able to call the cops and end the film 25 mins in.

c) When they baddies rammed their car, why did they not 1) run the fucker stood in front of them over, and/ or b) keep going – who cares about your car’s rims at that point.

d) When the friend arrived (in what has to be the longest and most obvious set up of a “he’s going to get shot accidentally” scene I have had the misfortune of watching) why didn’t the daft cunt ring the cops when a brick was lobbed through his car window, let alone when he got out (you read that right – HE GOT OUT) to investigate and found the ruined car and broken-into house. The twat deserved a 12-bore to the face.

e) After shooting said idiot in the mush, why did they feel the need to run – quite obviously the hidey hole worked, just on the wrong target. Find another place and wait it out.

f) After the strangely-non-working-because-it-is-charging-phone, this next fuck up ranks as the film biggest. Having offed his mate, the man decided to try “an old radio in the barn”. Like we all would at this point. Cos radios are just like phones and dead easy to use. And with the convenience of it being outside where the baddies are I’m only surprised he didn’t try it first. The absolute cunt. Actually, I shouldn’t be too hard on him – after all he was just doing what the idiot writer/director told him too. I bet there was a piece of his mind screaming “This is stupid!” too. Anyhoo, he’s committed to the idea now. Fully signed up and raring to go. But what of his lovely and unarmed girlfriend? She wants to come with him because he has the only gun. He says no saying she’ll be safe in the house. The house that the mask wearing psychos have been walking through since they started their attack. This idiot thinks that leaving her in an open and indefensible house will make her safer than if she grabs some knives and goes with him to the barn where at least she can keep an eye out for the killer while he plays at being Rubber Duck. Jesus H Presley.

It was at this point, dear reader (3) that I gave up on the film altogether. I couldn’t care less what happened to these two just as long as it was soon so I could go home. He was caught on his way to the barn, she hurt her leg looking for him, she hid in the most obvious place in the house (after ‘under the bed’) and was found, both of them were tied to a chair and slowly & repeatedly stabbed in a scene that was less shocking than it wanted to be and far more nauseating than it had any right in being. Oh, and she might have survived and the killers may well try and strike again. Who fucking cares. The only crime of the whole film is that the writer/director is free to do another.

Actually there was another crime. The opening of the film shows a relationship on the rocks and at a crisis point. This part of the film was interesting and beautifully shot and acted. If the writer/director had had the balls to make a film about these two people and this relationship then I have a feeling I would have loved it. As it was, he just went in for 90 mins of torture porn and is the lesser man for it.

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(1) In Littlejohn’s case the only justice I can think of that would fit would for him to be drugged up by crooked foreigners a la Popeye Doyle in The French Connection and then to be sold around rough Turkish gay dungeons where he can spend the rest of his days repeatedly having his miserable little ring stretched by just the kind of racial stereotype he most fears/desires (2)

(2) You know he just protests a little too much in his column, doesn’t he.

(3) As far as I can tell, no one is reading this bar me. Fuck the lot of you then.