The true horror of The Strangers (2008) is realizing that they could get into the house and kill the couple whenever they wanted to; they were just wanting to toy with them for as long as possible.
The very best kind of horror always has some degree of this. Specifically, the realization that you weren’t safe when you thought you were. That sudden loss of control is a major payoff
@@brodyca1898 Almost any horror franchise. Jason didn't hold off killing people to raise tension, Freddie didn't have any powers outside of dreams so was neutralized otherwise, Hellraiser was a bunch of demons that were more worried about eternal torture than death, Jeepers Creepers, the demon was not trying to draw anything out, once it picked a victim it went for it. I mean, if you are trying to stretch the definition of horror tension to "not immediately murdering every person on screen every second" you'd be right, otherwise you're a dolt.
Saw the first movie when I was a kid and the whole "why are you doing this" "because you were home" stuck with me for a while. To a point where I didn't want to be home alone. The shots where you can see them in the house but it doesn't always draw attention to it was what amplified it as well. It's haunting to know it's a game to the killers. It's not like Michael or Jason where they just get a high body count. Reminds me of that film with the deaf woman and the guy who stalks/breaks in and attacks her. The bit where she leaves a message saying police called she hasn't saw his face and he takes the mask off in front of her letting her know he means business.
I've watched thousands of movies, and I've never heard of it. Maybe it wasn't nearly as good as you think it was. How many Academy Awards was it nominated for?
Worst unrealistic horror movie trope is when someone is totally distressed about something and the other person just straight up dont believe him or her. "it must have been your imagination"
Bro I can’t remember the movie but it was one of those “I never let go of my camera” movie this bitch moves her a camera in on a cabin someone is standing by the door she quickly moves back to the door and gasps this is the dialogue Camera girl- “Oh my god” Friend:”what is it” Camera girl “I saw someone” Friend “no you didn’t”
At my theater everyone let out a collective sigh whenever the main guy had to do his whole monologue when facing one of the strangers and getting knocked out for it
DUDE, YEAH. I find it so stupid because he did not hesitate at ALL when he shot the cabin owner (thinking it was a Stranger), so why did he have to hesitate during that moment??
See, you just justified social media, and the only positive thing about it. Because social media is so pervasive, now when someone says "hold my beer", there is no one to do that because they all instantly pull out their phones. No free hands. Darwin Award winner lives another day. 😏
@@citiestoash ...with a wife going on 14 years, raising 2 daughters, and being 1 of 2 guys in a department of a dozen for just as many years, you'd be hard pressed to make that claim in the flesh. @shadowofdread7018 ... Reddit? Nope. Never touch the site. If I'm a mod, that's news to me. 🤷🏻♂️
It's pretty telling that there are many different options for what the title could be about. Literally every franchise is being killed off intentionally.
@@leonkuwata4510 Destroy all classic American media, disenfranchise and demoralize the American people, etc etc. You know, what they've been doing the years.
@@chimponkoman Well the answer anyone at Disney and in Hollywood would give (and the obvious answer to anyone with a quarter brain cell) is "They aren't".
@@BugleBottom Nah bruh you can't be doing stuff like that in America. I know too many people with a cross over between gun ownership and having watched the first Strangers movie way back when it came out. Going and standing outside peoples homes with those masks is a great way to get lead poisoning LMAO
its crazy how hard the entertainment industry is beefing right now. literally every single company who makes any entertainment product has been racing to piss themselves on the biggest stage they possibly can. weird times.
Nothing made me laugh harder than when she literally sees a masked stranger and then 5mins later she gaslights herself and lights a blunt and plays some tunes 😭
Not defending AI but yeah it was pretty bad out there even prior. At least those movies were uniquely bad though, it just feels like we're getting the same bad movies over and over again.
I think both sides are right in this in a way, people like Steven Seagal have been making strait trash for decades at this point, but modern movies are definitely getting much worse somehow. Considering how many creators on YT use the ai voices to narrate for them or to write bad fiction stories I'm definitely concerned
@@TheRealStevenSeagalsyeah but AI writings only really popped off in like what? The last 2 years, this problems been goin on since like 2018, got real bad around 2020-2021 now it's just continuing shit movie after shit movie
The second I heard “it looks like a nice town I bet people are really happy here” and “do you know what today is? The last day of our 3 day roadtrip. And our 3 year anniversary.” I knew this would be a stinker.
Games have been awful about that for a while now. Just terrified at the thought that someone didn't get the message on their own so it's spelled out for them
and here was me thinking Halloween Ends sucked look that movie could have been good they had a really cool song Come 2 me by Johnny Goth the new person they were building up was actually kinda cool then they just decided ah lets kill him booooo and Michael Myres dies pretty awfully not painful or gory no just boring
The best part about the car scene is they sat in joes car for probably 15 seconds before the stranger came with his truck, then the stranger revved the truck at them for 5-10 seconds and they just sat there and we're like "oh no what do we do!" Then the scene where he has a shotgun to one of the strangers he sits there for no joke 1-2 minutes trying to talk to her before getting blind sided by a guy full sprinting through leaves and doesn't hear him.
Next there will be a new TCM movie where the Leatherface doesn’t wear people’s faces, and he doesn’t have a chainsaw, and he isn’t part of a cannibalistic family. And it doesn’t take place in Texas. And it turns out Franklin from the first movie was alive the whole time and he was the “puppet master” of every single TCM movie for the past 40+ years.
@@daniboy4153at least that movie has Matthew McConaughey in it as Vilmer. He’s probably the best part of that movie, and the only character who feels like he belongs in the Sawyer family.
Just watched the trailer with my wife to test something. She stopped mid way and asked if it was a remake for chapter one of the first movie. I said no, we watched the rest, and she called the last line word for word, lol. Then, she went on to ask what does this have to do with where it all began. They missed the mark horrendously.
I had never heard of this movie before, but the news title at 2:04 explained everything: Tarot had the Moonfall writer but Strangers has Renny Harlin, Finland's curse upon Hollywood.
Oh my god I watched this movie two days ago with my sister and her friend and in the theatre there were like three other people, everyone was laughing or making fun of the main characters the ENTIRE MOVIE. 😭😭 My sister was so pissed at them she started cussing them out, like genuine rage
I rewatched the original and it didn’t hold up nearly as well as I thought it would. BUT the “Because you were home” line in the film STILL sends shivers down my spine 😳
I honestly liked 2 better felt for like a Slasher and u felt bad for the characters the first ine I remember being bored waiting for something to happen which did in the last 15 minutes 🙃
@@tanner201x8 Well, can you give your opinion then? I think it's fantastic on first watch because the realistic situation is very tense. On rewatch it wasn't as fun because the tension is lost since you know how the movie plays out. I don't think rewatch-ability makes a good movie though, so I'll always defend the OG.
It is frustrating how often many forms of media associate people smoking with them having hallucinations when this is actually an extremely uncommon event. If you’re not tripping hard or didn’t take a massive amount of THC, you probably won’t get such visuals unless you’re predisposed to be more greatly effected or are schizophrenic. It’s common for your vision to slightly change while smoking. Seeing things is an indication of psychosis; you have something greater going on in such a scenario 😅
i was saying this last night… ive heard so many stories of “i saw into the future” “i saw myself walking infont of me” “i started hearing voices”… ive been smoking every day for the past 5 years, not once has anything like that happened to me… the most thats happened is ‘i couldnt walk for 30 minuets’ so if anything weird happens after smoking weed, its either youre fucked up in the head or your shit was laced.
Ive been so high I forget that my eyes need to be open to see and yet Ive never seen anything. Im actually more likely to get so zoned in on Megamind I stop seeing anything beyond the screen
All they had to do was put in some throwaway lines near the beginning about her having a bad reaction to her BFs specific stuff, or show he was lacing it with something that could cause visual disturbances she didn’t know about. Simple shit they didn’t think to write or they left behind in editing
Midsommar still has the best depiction of Shrooms I’ve ever seen. It’s not over-exaggerated and when there are visuals it’s relation to her deteriorating mental state.
“The cultural obsession with equating a movie’s success to its box office is incredibly damning to this industry. It’s pushing the industry more and more to making pure product, which is another reason why you constantly have reboots. It’s McDonald’s. People know what they’re going to sit down and watch. Inherently, it’s unhealthy for your brain.” -Lilly Wachowski
I get it, but the obsession isn't cultural. It's material. It's just capitalism. Like with many things, introducing a profit motive is deleterious to art, plain & simple.
@@dr.zoidberg8666I’d argue capitalism, at least in its modern form, is practically cultural. Consumerism is a social behavior, one inextricably tied to our modern societies. Agreed though, the death of art starts when profit becomes the goal.
True but we also live in an age where reviews can't even be trusted anymore and when the general audience doesn't go see a movie, usually that's a sign the movie wasn't good. There's obvious exceptions though
@@Sonamyfan875Nah, but the arts did definitely thrive under conditions where profit wasn't the main motive. It's not capitalism vs communism it's quite literally just stating profit as a motive makes horrible art.
I am perplexed by the decision not to release this film directly to streaming services. It is yet another disappointment in the horror genre, and I must admit that I am not surprised.
Bro I had a client today (I’m a barber) telling me I HAD to go see the new Strangers. Dude said it was “unlike anything he had seen.” this same dude just last week told me that Rebel Moon was the first “actually good” movie of the year…
How to make Cabot Mac n Cheese from the store bought box (I was bored ok?) . Have water boil on stove . When water is boiled, stir noodles for about 12 mins . Drain the noodles when done . Add milk, butter, cheese powder . Mix until it’s chunkless . Stir cheese sauce with noodles . Enjoy!
A trilogy? Seriously!? So many talented writers and directors are fighting for a spot on some random TV show, and this "Moonfall" guy gets a trilogy? *Apparently I misheard Charley here, he was referring to the director of Tarot. But my point still stands Harlin's track record isn't clean either.
Renny Harlin has been bad ever since 2000! His last good movie was "Deep Blue Sea" in 99. To me, his good movies were "A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master", "Die Hard 2", "Cliffhanger", "The Long Kiss Goodnight" and "Deep Blue Sea"
You see the Strangers have the ability to steal all their good Karma so while the Strangers have 10/10 plot armor. The main characters act like brain dead cartoon characters.
This is and has always been the reality of the horror genre. The barrier to entry for making horror movies is very low, which means that youd inevitably get an abundance of slop.
Only complaint is the fact that I have actually been tired enough as to where I saw a picture of someone and genuinely believed that someone was there.
I'm so glad you did a run on this movie because I was honestly hyped up to see it, I watched the first one when it came out to red box, my parents were going out of town and I was home alone (I was still in high school) it scared tf outta me, so I respected it. When I saw this new one come out I had my hopes up big, bc I was hoping they would give some story where it all really started but of course just like all horror movie franchises they just copy what they already did in different location with new actors. Thank you for saving me from wasting 50 bucks (10 for the ticket, 40 for popcorn and drinks).
I have never heard my girlfriend say that a movie was bad, she will only ever talk about the positive parts of a movie. She went to the strangers movie with her sister and said it was terrible. I was shocked, the movie has to be absolute dog shit
My girlfriend and I watched chapters one last night, and I literally fell asleep as soon as they got the key for the Airbnb and I woke up when they got their truck rammed fell back asleep and woke up in the movie was over
@@SJ-Lakui America differs heavily from Town to Town let alone different states. Mt prices are around $13 unless its on the $6 time slot but idk of they still do that
I didn't know I'd start watching your channels for movie reviews of old things but you seem to have similar taste in movies so I appreciate your commentary!
The problem is that there's nothing new to offer to the table nowadays. Even if you're going to make a movie, at least offer something worth watching, add some twists, or subvert expectations. Do something unique. The problem is that if you get lazy with the same old stuff, it gets tiring.
You dont need to even thinking new troupe. King exile his son to be strong? Thats common troupe, but stop trying to make it more epic. Heck try making it over the top that actually 3 King from different Kingdom do the same yet join mercenary and these Son actually become rivals and whatever happen. Make the character likeable. Use the guilt of time instead guilt of self. Move on. It just a example, but these day movie looks like mental illness story. Heck they not even build Expectation for the watcher to step on. Most great game come from sweat shop, probably thats where they found light of creativity too. These writer are just... sorry not sorry probably not have a good experience to actually tell a story.
I hope you’ll consider watching smaller movies since big studio horror movies keep disappointing you, “The first omen”, “late night with the devil”, and “I saw the tv glow” are all smaller budget horrors that released this year that are also great and deserve to be seen. Love the content btw.
At this point, horror movies have almost completely rotted to the levels that things such as adult animated shows have. You could explain tarot to me like it was a family guy episode.
And to think, Renny Harlin once gave us some really good movies like "A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master", "Die Hard 2", "Cliffhanger", "The Long Kiss Goodnight" and "Deep Blue Sea". Did they do the ending too?? The "Because you were home" scene?
I was locked in on the 1am fridge call for cold beer but the moment you mentioned an inhaler I deflated and said just let him die cold beer and an inhaler he's not long for the world.
The first movie made no sense. Like the strangers already broke into their house, they're 3 ft behind them ready to swing the axe and then they immediately disappear when the protagonist turns around. Why?
The point is that they were trying to terrorize them for the fun of it. What's scary is that the reason they do what they do is never revealed they do it for no good reason
@@braxtonvincent6359 I guess but there's literal shots of them swinging back the axe and the last line of the movie when the strangers get into the truck she says something like "next time it won't be so difficult" like they were being interrupted or something
I remember watching this with friends who were convinced that the guy (I dunno his name) was behind it all. His actions were so dumb and so self sabotaging that it seemed like he was trying to gaslight his girlfriend on purpose. Honestly the movie probably could’ve turned out better that way.
That is literally what this awful reboot trilogy is for. They are 100% going to reveal who Tamara is/was. Same goes for the identities of the Strangers. We will find out in this trilogy. It will suck. Who's Tamara? WHO CARES! It was a throw away line to sound creepy. When you try to "dig into the lore" of it, you defang it. It will no longer be scary or creepy. Instead, it will just be stupid. Incredibly stupid.
thank you for covering this. i was intrigued by the trailer (after semi-liking the first one & the second one being a snoozefest) and now i am not anymore
