The Strangers

What better way to pick up my old class blog than with a review of the scary movie The Strangers? Because that's exactly like me, to pick it up a year and a half later and start out in medias res. So here goes.

The Strangers

...scared the bejeeze out of me.

I wasn't allowed to watch scary movies when I was little, so I never was one of those kids who had been traumatized by a horror film. Except that I did watch Halloween, and I remembered tidbits of the movie throughout my life and was constantly plagued by nightmares of that tccchh ttccchhh sound surrounding Michael Myers's appearances in the movie. We rented the original Halloween for Halloween last year, too, and I got just as scared as when I was little and saw Jamie Lee Curtis trying to drag herself down the hallway as Michael Myers slowly closed in on her. One of my students even dressed up as Michael Myers for a Halloween-themed pep rally day back when I was teaching, and he took great fun in popping out from behind my desk and hunting me down at the pep rally after he found out I was completely scared of Michael Myers (I don't think he went to any of his classes that day, just so he could appear in all of my classes at inopportune moments). My point is, though, that, besides Michael Myers, I'm not really freaked out by scary movies like others are (head nod towards my husband who is one of "those others" (side note: The Others was an enjoyable film, and I got semi-freaked out when Nicole Kidman discovered the picture of her help in their deceased repose)). I finally watched The Exorcist in the sixth grade, and I fell asleep in parts of it and was unimpressed by the terrific parts. But I do enjoy the religious thrillers like Stigmata, Constantine, and Emily Rose, only because I'm intrigued by the ideas presented, but The Exorcist never really piqued my interest, thrill-wise or otherwise. Texas Chainsaw Massacre has come the closest to freaking me out, but I still can't say it's scary because it seems slightly unreal. It's the real stuff that scares me so much. So Friday the 13th rolled around this past week, and I told Brian I wanted to watch The Strangers. He (really) reluctantly agreed, and we went to the 10 p.m. showing.

I'd seen the trailer spoilers, so I knew what the bad guys were gonna look like and all. But the movie quite literally almost gave me a heart attack. I have high blood pressure anyway, and I know I probably should start looking to change my diet so that I don't end up with cardiovascular disease. I also have a heart murmur, but I think it's just an innocent one. Anyway, I came out of the movie with pains in the left side of my chest, sharp pains that hurt all the way through to my back when I took a breath. The stress level is sustained throughout the movie, and I'm intrigued by the decisions made by the makers of the movie, namely the following two questions:
1. Did they research the levels of sustained stress that average moviegoers can take, and is that why they decided to keep the movie to a short one hour and twenty minutes? It reminds me of this article http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/06/10/activists-preparing-against-use-of-brown-note-at-dem-convention/ wherein the new method of crowd-control is to use a "bomb" that will make protesters poo their pants using a noise frequency set to "poop." Then that reminds me of "The Real World: London" where one of the cast was in a band, and his sole ambition was to find the noise frequency through his instruments and equalizers that would also make his fans poo their pants. I wonder if the makers of the Brown Bomb watched "The Real World" and got the idea from him. Anyway, back to my original idea: it's very good that the movie ended when it did because I don't think either Brian or I could have lasted much longer. Maybe we're just getting too old for such stressful situations. I already know that I can't sit through dramas (if you see my movie list on my profile, they're all pretty much easy-going chick flicks) with any sort of stress because my blood pressure rises. I cannot describe how utterly terrified I was when we got out of the movie house, which leads to my next question . . .

2. There was very little gore and dialogue and story in this movie. The whole of the surmounting tension was built up through the music score and waiting for the masked ones to pop up. And even though I'd already seen the scenes where they pop up at windows and such, it was still very tense waiting for them. Referring to the aforementioned movies, I will direct you to the original thriller of my nightmares. Was it because of my fear of Michael Myers with his simple mask and his slow and methodical hunting that I succumbed to the terrifying torture of The Strangers? If so, why wasn't I also scared by Jason or Freddy or Pinhead? There must just be something about a simple story and its layers of stress, I suppose. Maybe I should take that lesson and apply it to my own writing . . .