Most characters don’t make it out alive in horror movies. Some survive until the final reel if they’re lucky, while others become bodies on the slab before the titles have even run! They are sacrifices for us bloodthirsty fans, but there’s more to them than that. They have wants never met. Stories never properly finished. In Always the Final Kill, Never the Final Girl, writer Matt Konopka digs up these poor souls lost under the shadow of heroes to give them the proper attention they deserve.
Usually, this column is a discussion in which I lament the death of a character from a horror film. But sometimes, it’s an examination of a person and what sends them careening off the road towards a terrible fate. A gaze into someone’s soul and what we can learn from their mistakes. With Renny Harlin’s reboot of THE STRANGERS coming up, I thought I might look back at writer/director Bryan Bertino’s unflinching original and the man who welcomes hopelessness into his home, James (Scott Speedman).
On the surface, Bertino’s THE STRANGERS is a rather simplistic home invasion film. Set just days before Valentine’s Day, James and his girlfriend, Kristen (Liv Tyler) arrive at his family abode in the middle of nowhere, both distraught. Turns out, James proposed to Kristen during a friend’s wedding, and she said no. She isn’t ready. As if sensing the weakness in their divide, a trio of masked strangers show up, intent on slaying the torn couple for reasons they cannot comprehend.
The strangers eventually do share their blunt rationale — we’ll get to that — yet what Bertino hints at is that they do not arrive at the couple’s door by chance. Like piranha sensing blood in the water, they can smell the despair that hangs over the two. They are arbiters of pain attracted to the scent, wishing to enact as much torment on others as possible. During a blink and you’ll miss it moment, we can spot their truck pull up in the background during a flashback to Kristen’s denial of James, engine grumbling like a cosmic creature tearing into their world. James’ heartbreak beats for all to hear. To the strangers, it’s a ringing dinner bell. Because in that moment, it becomes clear that James has given up on his love. On Kristen. On everything. Life as he knows it ends for him, and nothing could be more enticing to the strangers than that self-induced emptiness.
James’ retreat into himself isn’t without cause. Denial hurts, especially when the knife is twisted by someone you love. We meet this couple stopped at a red light, the glow like the blood of their wounds splashed over their skin as they face a crossroads in their relationship. At home, the shadows of the house swallow them whole, representative of the darkness that has invaded the space between them. But what James fails to understand beneath the pain is that Kristen only says no to the idea of marriage. She does not, however, say no to a life with him. Despite his withdrawal from her, Kristen does everything in her power to prove she still loves the guy. She holds him. She kisses him. She tells him she isn’t ready yet, emphasis on the word “yet.” James doesn’t hear her, though. He does what most men do when their egos are damaged. He drinks. He pulls away. He ignores her. Even after the unsettling appearance of Dollface (Gemma Ward) at their door, James abandons Kristen to go for a drive. And he keeps on abandoning her throughout the film, whether it’s not believing her when she tells him of the Masked Man (Kip Weeks) that broke into their house, or when he demands she stay inside while he confronts the strangers by himself. James isn’t the only one experiencing a hurt heart. Yet over and over, he’s too self-absorbed to prove he’s the man Kristen should be with. If anything, he accomplishes the opposite by remaining callous to what it is that she wants. And in the end, it costs him everything.
James surrenders to despair, and the strangers come calling. A trio of whom we can only assume make up a daughter, father and mother (aka Pin-Up Girl, played by Laura Margolis), they appear as a twisted version of what he desires most, a family. He wants a wife. Had hoped to spend their first night engaged in the place he grew up. Maybe even intended to raise a family there. Kristen’s simple denial of marriage is enough to shatter his dream into irreparable pieces, scraped up and glued back together as the pale faces of the strangers. They’re apt in leaving a bloody note referring to James as a “killer” after he accidentally guns down his friend, Mike (Glenn Howerton). James murders his own relationship. He could have accepted Kristen wasn’t ready to be a wife. He could have stayed by her side during the attack and been stronger together. He could have trusted her. Believed her. But he doesn’t. And if we’re to take anything from his actions, it’s that he probably never did respect or love her in the way she deserves to be.
Bertino crafts an effective home invasion film filled to the brim with dread, but what cements THE STRANGERS as a classic comes down to those final few moments. James and Kristen tied up together. Dawn signaling a new existence without one another. Kristen uttering, “why are you doing this?”, Dollface, as matter of fact as one can be, replying, “because you were home.” Because you answered the door. Because you didn’t stick together. Because you welcomed us in. THE STRANGERS continues to haunt audiences all these years later thanks to that final implication. No, it isn’t fair to say that James is responsible for his own death suffered at the hands of the killers, but there is something to be said for what happens when you give up and abandon the people you claim to love. The ugliness of that. The misery. The strangers that arrive at the couple’s door embody all those things. Did James ever really love Kristen, or did he only love the idea of her? We can’t say for sure. Just like we can’t know if the strangers would’ve kept on driving by had they not seen the despair of the couple. Or how we can’t know if answering the door sealed their fate. But what we can say is this; fans remember THE STRANGERS for its nihilistic encapsulation of a world where bad things happen just because. Well, what’s more nihilistic than giving up on someone, on the future, simply because things don’t play out exactly how you want them to?
When you do that… that’s when the strangers come knocking.
Preferred pronouns: He/him
Tags: Alex Fisher, Bryan Bertino, Columns, Gemma Ward, Glenn Howerton, Horror, Kevin Greutert, Kip Weeks, Laura Margolis, Liv Tyler, Matt Konopka, Peter Clayton-Luce, Peter Sova, renny harlin, Rogue Pictures, Roy Lee, Scott Speedman, Slashers, The Strangers, tomandandy
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