THE STRANGERS is THE seminal home invasion film of the 2000s, and that decade produced quite a few. It is almost hypnotically suspenseful. I'm a very vocal fan of the sequel, and talk about that one more often because most people aren't. But the first film is terrifying and an entirely different kind of movie.
This is just a pure distilled home invasion movie, where you never know why it's happening and you never know who is doing it to you. Part of the beauty of THE STRANGERS is that our characters are already going through by the time we’re first introduced to them. I love being dropped into the middle of a situation that is already tense and just gets worse from there. The story follows a couple renting a house for a friend’s wedding, only she has just rejected his marriage proposal and now they are left to spend the weekend with each other in this empty den of uncomfortable silence.
The scariest scene in the movie, for me, isn’t brutal or violent. It’s not even a jump scare. Liv Tyler's Kristen is already on edge by the time it happens, but she’s mostly dealt with knocking so far, and then you have this moment when the man in the mask makes his way into the house, is in the room with her, and she doesn't know it.
She is defenseless, she is alone, there is nothing she can do. If this were a slasher, this is where she dies. But to have this moment where he can so easily kill her and doesn't, that is so much scarier. That lets you know that all of the cards are in the killers' hands, and it remains like that through to the end of the film.
THE STRANGERS is a rare horror movie where the ending is used as a selling point, where a spoiler is dropped to entice people into watching it, and with good reason. The killers, at the end, give the scariest motivation pretty much ever explained in a horror film, in a single line. Asked why they're doing this, they explain "Because you were home." That's it. There's no "why." You don’t know who they are. They don't even know you. They knocked, you answered, and from the moment you opened the door, you sealed your fate. This movie is a masterclass in "less is more." The less you know, the scarier it is.