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'The Strangers'

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BY RAFER GUZMÁN | rafer.guzman@newsday.com

May 30, 2008

The most gripping moments in "The Strangers" come early, when Kristen McKay and James Hoyt ( Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) enter the secluded, woodsy cabin that will soon become their torture chamber. They look like a typical horror-movie couple - that is, totally gorgeous - but their relationship isn't typical: It's falling apart. Their initial scenes together are sensitive, even touching, and for a few minutes "The Strangers" seems about to develop into something out of the ordinary.

That glimmer of promise gets quickly snuffed when three masked sickos show up, and what began as an adult drama degenerates into a grade-school fright flick. Writer and first-time director Bryan Bertino wastes his taut, tense premise - two lovers, three villains, one house - by depending on wearingly familiar tricks. His imagination really runs mild: loud noises, faces popping up in windows, menacing messages scrawled in red. Our heroes, who initially seemed so intelligent, begin running around like idiots, knifeless and planless.

Within minutes it's clear Bertino has used up his best ammo, but he keeps shooting the same blanks until he reaches (barely) a feature-length run time. The film lasts a scant 85 minutes but feels more like 850.

Its pervasive nihilism (offset by Peter Sova's warm, romantic photography) recalls another recent home-invasion movie, "Funny Games." There, the terrorizers were two beautiful blond boys reminiscent of Leopold and Loeb; here they're a trio of Manson types whose only motivation is to cause fear and pain. Hoping to add a sense of realism, "The Strangers" claims to be inspired by a true story, but that appears to be a crock: It's a story no English-language newspaper seems to have covered.

True or not, "The Strangers" offers little more than some dull savagery and a feeling of hopelessness. The movie may think it's staring bravely into some moral abyss, but it's really just a disappointing downer.

THE STRANGERS (R). Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman are terrorized by masked strangers in a remote cabin. 1:25 (violence, scary situations). At area theaters.