If there’s one lie that humans, and particularly Americans, consistently have to tell themselves on a daily basis, it’s that they are completely protected by the few inches of wood, glass, or metal that make up the front doors to their homes. We all go to bed at night believing that our invisible barriers will keep evil well outside of our safe spaces, and we close our eyes, neglecting the fact that a sturdy kick can shatter the false reality of security in an instant.
Home invasions can happen in any place, at any time, day or night. In fact, 1.65 million of them happen a year in the United States, often resulting in burglaries, attacks, and sometimes even murder. Many people choose to believe they can combat this with security systems, dogs, or firearms, but realistically, there’s no true way to truly prepare for the element of surprise if someone wants to be inside your house.
15 years ago in 2008, filmmaker Bryan Bertino took the idea of random crime, and debuted one of the scariest movies of the 2000s, and one of the most effective and terrifying home invasion horror movies to this day with The Strangers.
For those unfamiliar, The Strangers follows the simple story of James (Scott Speedman) and Kristen (Liv Tyler), a couple who, after attending a wedding where James’ proposal idea is denied by Kristen, come back to a private family vacation home in emotional disarray. In the middle of their emotional conversation, the couple is interrupted by a knock on their door, and what follows is a night of horror, as three masked individuals cut off all communication and terrorize the couple.
On the surface in 2023, this premise may seem similar to many home invasion horror movies, but in 2008, there weren’t many films that highlighted this type of situation, without being tied to a larger whodunit-style story (Scream) or had strange direction techniques (Funny Games). And it was certainly the most popular, boasting Liv Tyler fresh off The Lord of the Rings franchise a few years prior, and The Incredible Hulk, which premiered the same year.
The movie also made $82 million dollars against its minuscule $9 million dollar budget. It was a massive success that led to a sequel, The Strangers: Prey at Night, more than a decade later.
The Strangers was pure terror that followed a realistic play-by-play of what it meant to have your private space invaded, and watch someone slowly, and brutally scare and hurt the person you love.
Alongside the scary premise, the film raised its intensity level with seemingly every scene in its short 90-minute runtime. It actually felt like you were experiencing what James and Kristen were, in real time. We (as the audience) were frustrated with the couple’s choices, though in hindsight, I’m not sure any of us could have handled it much better.
We also got a fly-on-wall view of the assailants, as we watched them in the dark corners of the rooms, watching the couple from blind spots, unable to warn the victims.
Related: ‘Knock at the Cabin’ Review: Shyamalan Directs a Solid Home Invasion Thriller
To add to the terror, Bryan Bertino based The Strangers on similar real-life events; the first being the famous Charles Manson-organized home invasion and murder of Sharon Tate in 1969; the second being the 1981 Keddie Cabin incident that claimed the lives of four people, and the third being a scary childhood experience of Bertino’s, where someone knocked on his door while his parents weren’t home, asking for someone that didn’t live there. He found out later that these people were burglarizing the homes that had no answer.
And that brings us to perhaps the scariest thing about The Strangers. Presumably, like the Keddie Cabin murders, the attackers had no motive for terrorizing (and possibly murdering) James and Kristen. The couple continuously cries, pleads, and asks the masked individuals, “Why are you doing this? Why us?”, to which they answer with one of the most chilling quotes in all of the horror genre, “Because you were home.”
Related: “Because You Were Home” – The History of Home Invasion Horror
It was that goosebumps-inducing line that let us all know that there was no rhyme or reason for these horrendous, intrusive acts. This wasn’t Rosemary’s Baby or Scream. There wasn’t a plan tied to some grand scheme by a villain.
It was at that moment that we were reminded that the brutality that Kristen and James endured was not only pointless and motiveless, but it could just as easily happen to any one of us. Bryan Bertino tapped into an actual daily fear that all of us have, that we often put on the back burner in our minds. He was able to haunt us with a reminder of reality, and because of The Strangers, now it’s not something we’re likely to forget.
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