Welcome to the Kill Count, where we tally up the victims in all our favorite horror movies.
I'm James A. Janisse, and today we're looking at 'The Strangers', released in 2008 by writer-director Brian Bertino.
'The Strangers' is a home invasion movie boiled down to its most basic elements.
You've got a young couple in an isolated house being tormented by a group of strangers in masks for no apparent reason.
That's really all there is to it. In fact, during the entire movie, you only ever see eight people.
It's hard to think of a horror movie with less frills than this. But whether that simplicity is a strength or a weakness,
is up to taste. I think the movie does a great job building psychological terror and using really effective jump scares throughout.
And I like how the movie works as a commentary on how horror in a post-9/11 world is random and real, instead of moralistic and fantastical.
On the other hand, if you think this is a slow, boring movie where barely anything happens, I mean I ain't gonna argue with you.
Just look at the runtime of this Kill Count compared to all the others.
There is not a lot that happens here.
Even with such a deliberate pace, is there a chance that this movie can rack up a decent body count?
Well, let's find out and get to the kills.
The movie begins with a card saying, 'inspired by true events', which is kind of true, but they weren't exactly the events the other card describes, which is the setup for the movie.
In actuality, Bertino was inspired by like half-Manson murders, half- some other shit.
We hear a distressed 911 call as we watch some fancy lads go into a house where it looks like there was a party that got a little too hardy.
Gonna need a lot of club soda for that stain.
Let's jump back in time with a title card!
Get strange.
Our non-stranger protagonists are Kristen and James, played by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman.
And it looks like they've just come from a wedding and/or wedding-related soiree.
They're at James' family summer home, and although the place is decked out with everything you need to get the love juices flowing,
from beds of rose petals to candles for mood lighting,
it doesn't exactly look as though either of these two feel like making love.
In fact, the company is so bad that James is calling his buddy Mike and asking him to come pick him up,
since things did not go as planned that night.
Spoiler, fellow James. They don't get better.
We find out in a flashback that earlier that night, James had popped the big question to Kristen.
And things, well, let's just say that's not exactly the face you want to see at that moment.
One of the things this movie has going for it though is how these two aren't angry caricatures, sniping at each other over a failed relationship.
Even though the proposal was turned down, both of them are really sensitive of how the other must be feeling.
-[Kristen] I'm so sorry it wasn't the way you thought it would be.
-[James A. Janisse] Seeing that they're good people just makes the impact of what happens later that much greater.
Hell, they're probably still in love, or at the very least in lust, since they start to have a little living room furniture sex,
before a mid-coitus knock at the door interrupts their intimacy.
-[James] Isn't it like 4 in the morning?
-[James A. Janisse] At the door is a blonde woman, obscured in shadow and it sounds like she wants to know if her friend can come out and play.
-[Woman 1] Is Tamara here?
-[James A. Janisse] James tells her she's got the wrong house.
There's one of those, 'okay, you can get the fuck off my porch now' pauses before the woman leaves with a cryptic line.
-[Woman 1] See ya later.
-[James A. Janisse] When Kristen notes that she's out of cigarettes, James offers to go get her some as an excuse to take a drive.
He takes off for the store, leaving a fire for her to stay warm by and while he's gone,
she tries on the ring that she rejected while listening to the unsettling baby voice of Joanna Newsom.
[singing]
Sorry, her voice creeps me out a little bit.
But then there's another loud knock at the door and if you're watching this movie at 2 in the morning by yourself,
now's the time you start to get a little freaked out about it.
Yeah, man, it'll getcha.
Kristen asks through the door if anyone's there and the same woman from earlier asks once again is Tamara's home.
Kristen tells her to shoo and locks the door, but the she notices the fire getting smoky.
Possibly from some smoke stack tampering, like she's getting punked by Bert from Mary Poppins.
It sets off the smoke alarm, which she removes haphazardly so it falls to the floor and then there's more knocking at her door.
She finds her cellphone dead so she plugs it in to charge, then uses the house phone to call James and tell him hey you might want to get back here.
Things are getting weird, as she changes into less vulnerable attire.
After the call abruptly disconnects, we get the best shot of the movie and honestly, one of the creepiest shots I've ever seen.
As Kristen fails to notice a man with a mask over his head step into the shadows in the far background of the house.
The shot goes on for a long time as he silently observes her, and when she finally does turn around in a different angle,
a return to the first shot shows he's not there anymore.
Expert creepy film-making right there.
That's how you spook an audience without using jump scares.
Another knock alarms her enough to finally arm herself with a knife,
But she realizes she's in serious shit when she sees that the smoke detector has been picked up off the floor and set on a chair,
and that her charging cable has been cut in half by a sabatour.
She goes to the window to check outside for any drunk kids, she finds the man in the mask staring back at her.
She stumbles back, startled, and bumps into the record player which sets it off with a repetitive skip that scores the next couple of minutes.
[music]
The front door cracks open and when she peeps outside, she briefly catches a mask.
But wait a minute, it's not Halloween.
So, safe from Sam's judgment, Kristen closes the door on the dollface trick-or-treater and retreats to the bedroom to bunker down with her knife.
She hears the skipping record get turned off, but it's only James that comes around the corner, concerned about her hand that's been cut open
and the way she's freaking out, man.
He searches the house to make her feel safer, but doesn't find anyone or anything suspicious.
They probably should have checked the fireplace where Kristen's phone is heating up more than a Galaxy Note 7.
When they look out through the window though, they do see the blonde lady standing in the middle of the road, just staring at their house.
Pretty creepy thing for a person to do, and ope, now she's gone.
When James goes out to his Volvo to get his phone, he finds all his car windows have been smashed.
Then a hand reaches and touches him, but the person runs away when James turns around.
Clearly these people are just fucking with them.
When James sees the blonde lady in the road again and asks her what she wants, she doesn't respond.
Kristen sticks her head out to see what's going on, and then the blonde lady's gone again.
Uh, neat trick, I guess?
Back inside, James bandages Kristen's hands while she wonders why anyone would do this.
Then he sees that his phone has also been tampered with, prompting him to say that it's time for them to leave.
As they're pulling out though, some headlights come up on them and driving the truck is a pin-up mask lady who might be having a little bit of a break issue there.
Might wanna have the Pep Boys take a look at that.
They manage to get back inside the house where James begins looking for his dad's old gun.
He finds it on top of the bookcase, and with some ammo from the bedroom, loads that boomstick up.
Also in the bedroom, is some personalized window writing.
Oh, shit. They're just trying to say hello.
But right when they're going to throw the front doors open and let bygones be bygones, an axe through the door
signals that maybe the opportunity for tea time has passed.
They board up the door with furniture and bunker down in the bedroom as the record starts spinning 'Mama Tried' by Earl Haggard.
[music]
And if you're gonna be tortured by strangers with music, it could be a lot worse.
I'm not even into country music, but this song is dope as hell.
We're about halfway through the movie now, so it's a good time to introduce a golden god into the mix.
James' friend Mike that he called earlier, played by Glenn Howarton, whose career I would steal in a heartbeat if I had a monkey's paw,
gets to the summer home in response to James' voicemail, only to be greeted by his window getting busted out.
There's no one outside that he can see, but he does notice the remains of that little fender bender from earlier
and he realizes something must be wrong, you know, because of the implication.
Also, he's a huge Earl Haggard fan, so he can't help but wander into the free concert going on inside.
The loud music drowns everything else out, so Mike doesn't hear when the man in the mask shows up behind him,
nor when he raises his axe to get this Kill Count started proper.
Then this happens.
Damn, that sucks, man.
You definitely just shot your best friend in the face there, James.
It's a tragic death, not only because this would give James PTSD for the rest of his life, but also because it means we don't get anymore Glenn Howerton in this movie.
I saw his name in the credits and set my excitement level way to high.
James crawls over to check out the body and, yup confirmed, it fucking wrecks him.
Probably doesn't help when he finds an accusatory message in his window mail.
You think that they wrote that with blood or lipstick? It's very nice lettering either way.
He heads outside because there's an old radio in the barn and he wants to use it to call for help.
But before he does, he checks on his car and finds that it's been all tampered with.
I'm not a mechanic or anything, but that don't look good.
On his way to the barn, he sees one of the assailants with a flashlight and he almost manages to get a shot off before they blind him with the light,
and man in the mask revs up like a deuce and runs through the night to knock James out.
Kristen realizes something is wrong so she makes a run for the barn herself, but she trips along with way,
and this pretty much wrecks her shit for the rest of the movie.
As she crawls her way to the barn, the pin-up stranger comes up behind her.
But again, these people are just toying with their victims so when Kristen turns around, the pin-up lady is gone.
Inside the barn, Kristen finds the radio James mentioned but right as she gets it working and finally hears another voice on the other end,
pin-up lady appears to smash her radio to pieces with an axe.
Guess she was never a fan of the whole CB craze.
Then apparently, she just lets Kristen crawl away, cuz that's what we see next.
And I totally understand if you're frustrated by the lack of get-up by the killers in this movie.
They're taking their sweet-ass time with this.
I mean, shit, dollface is just chilling on the swingset there.
Can you imagine Jason taking a break from his killing to just mess around on a playground for a minute?
It'd be kinda cute actually.
Kristen eventually makes her way back inside, where the power gets turned off so now the lighting is even moodier.
She narrowly avoids being seen by the man in the mask or maybe he does see her and he's just fucking with her.
I don't know.
Either way, she hides inside a cabinet, giving us the classic horror shot of looking out at the dangerous killer from behind a thin cover of wooden slats.
The same thing happens that always happens in these situations: it appears to work since the man in the mask leaves,
but then she gets discovered.
The quiet atmosphere of the movie definitely helps the impact of the jump scares it does have, so this is a great one to watch next time you're aching for a hit of cortozone.
Dollface doesn't kill Kristen or anything, instead she just shakes the cabinet door a lot and then walks away.
Kristen pokes her head out, maybe a little insulted Dollface lost interest in her so fast.
Now she's more fixated on Kristen's ring and while she messes with it, Kristen arms herself a knife.
Again, she just can't wrap her head around the why of it all.
-[Kristen] Why are you doing this to us?
But the only answer she gets is James getting tossed into the living room by the man in the mask, who's now armed with a gun.
With the front door blocked by pin-up stranger, Kristen heads to the bedroom where she gets surprised by the lights coming back on.
Maybe they're done now?
Nah, the man in the mask tackles her against the hallway and knocks her out the box.
He drags her back into the living room, finally done toying with her and ready to move on to the film's finale.
Next thing you know, it's morning and this shot of the house in daylight adds a lot to the terror of this movie.
Normally, the bad things in horror films happen in the dark and you assume that if the characters can just make it through the night,
they'll be safe by sunup.
But here it is, late morning by the looks of it and Kristen and James are tied to some chairs,
facing down the three masked invaders that have tormented them all night.
Kristen asks one more time why they're doing this to them and she finally gets an answer.
-[Woman 1] Because you were home.
Things seem pretty hopeless as Kristen and James hold hands, and look at each other with affection.
-[Kristen] I love you.
-[James A. Janisse] And I hate to break it to you, but they are hopeless.
And to show Kristen and James just how hopeless things are, the strangers de-mask.
We never get to see their faces, but by revealing them to the couple, they're saying:
'we're fine with you seeing us without our masks because you 'bout to be dead.'
And that's absolutely terrifying.
Kristen begs and pleads but to no avail.
James gets stabbed in the torso by the man in the mask and then by the pin-up stranger, while dollface strangers takes the knife to Kristen's gut.
Multiple stabs are heard as the camera cuts away from this exercise in sociopathy, and when we come back,
we find James dead on the floor, having succumb to the knife wounds.
Most horror movies have kills that are silly or over the top or so unlikely that they can be fun.
But 'The Strangers' deals in realistic, absolutely horrifying carnage and it makes this death feel way more impactful than most.
But Kristen is still alive and when Mike's cellphone starts ringing, she musters up the strength to crawl her way over to it,
hoping for some kind of salvation.
But she misses the incoming call and before she can make an outgoing one herself, the male stranger shows up again, much to her dismay.
He takes the phone away and apparently leaves Kristen to her own fate, whatever it will be lying on the hallway floor.
We're back to those button-up Mormon boys, who run into the strangers when they stop their truck on the side of the road.
Dollface asks for one of their pamphlets and after admitting that she's, you know, sometimes a sinner, the boys give one to her.
The strangers get back in their truck and pin-up lady gives a debriefing.
-[Woman 2] It'll be easier next time.
Yeah, cuz you'll have a whole decade to prepare for the next time you pray at night.
The Mormon boys get to the scene of the crime, just like we saw in the beginning and look on at all the carnage the strangers have left.
When one them reaches out towards Kristen...
[scream]
Yeah, that happens. And that's the end of the movie.
The strangers did a good job terrorizing their victims and the audience, but how'd they do in the Kill Count department?
Let's find out and get to the numbers.
In a brand-new Kill Count low, only two people died in 'The Strangers' and they were both male.
So yeah, obviously we're looking at one really blue pie chart right there.
With a runtime of 88 minutes, that's a kill on average every 44 minutes.
Is that a new record too?
I'll give the golden chainsaw for coolest kill to Mike, since I only have two to choose from and his had the more explicit gore effects.
Plus it's sudden and a pretty good jump scare.
Dull machete for lamest kill goes to James, just kind of by default although like I said during the kills,
it's a pretty horrifying way to go out.
And that's it. 'The Strangers' came out in 2008 and I know it's kind of stretching the criteria of Kill Count movies, with it's two deaths and quiet plot,
but with 'Pray At Night' coming out on Friday, I figured you'd wanna see me cover it.
And Kill Count is the only way I have right now.
On Friday we finish off Freddy with the Nightmare remake and until then, I'm James A. Janisse. This has been the Kill Count
Thanks a lot for watching my Kill Count for 'The Strangers'.
I wanna thank a couple of my patrons like Angela Lobanacorsi and Saul Robless.
Also I wanna thank Chelsea for making that mask in just a couple of hours for me at the drop of a hat. That girl can do anything with a needle and thread.
Did you like 'The Strangers' or was it too boring for you? Let me know in the comments below.
And if you're normally too shy to share your opinion, don't worry, I think we're alone now.
See you on Friday with that Freddy remake. Be good people.