We first see James (Scott Speedman) and Kristen (Liv Tyler) sitting side by side in their car, their faces in the deep red glow of a traffic light. He also gives his protagonists a memorable introduction. Except that it’s also expertly staged, impressively ruthless, and-at least for me-really about something, even if that something ends up being the chilling nothing-in-particular alluded to by the masked murderess to her victim. Released in 2008 amid a deluge of stylishly deranged French, Japanese, and Korean imports, as well as a healthy flow of post-Eli Roth torture porn, Bryan Bertino’s debut looked pretty generic upon arrival, even by the standards of genre fare: another faux-authentic urban legend (“What you are about to see is inspired by true events” lies the opening title card) about a good-looking couple being stalked by a gang of killers. A sequel, The Strangers: Prey at Night, opens this weekend. They’re not quite the final lines of the film, but they’re the last word on why it’s endured while so many horror titles of the same early-21st-century vintage have not. ![]() This exchange from The Strangers has stuck with me for 10 years.
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