Screenhead

It’s something of a new phenomenon these days, but lately, the ladies are getting in on the killing sprees of horror film.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing; anything new in filmmaking is a cause for celebration, especially in the world of “more of the same” filmmaking that we live these days.  But is it a good move?  Let’s take a look.

There have been plenty of chick killers lately, and I don’t know about you, but for me it’s always sort of a surprise to find out the chick did it.  It’s not expected, and the unexpected is often the scariest thing there is.

Whether it’s Dawn O’Keefe and her killer teeth–it’s really better if you don’t ask where those teeth are–or Megan Fox parading around Jennifer’s Body, or even The Uninvited, more and more horror movies are letting the ladies handle the knives.  Even where they don’t, they’ve only got a guy around for muscle, which was the case in The Strangers.

Like I said, it’s the unexpected that give horror a real punch.  But on an operational level, this may not work so well.  One of the biggest points in horror is how the killer is an unstoppable mass of muscle.  Sending a woman in to do that poses a serious challenge, especially if you pit her against men who will, on average, have superior upper body strength.  You’ll be left playing a handful of basic themes–either she gets super-strength from a device or otherworldly power, or she’s constantly vamping her way through her kills, counting on looking unassuming.  Unless you address the basic discrepancy in strength somehow, eventually, you’ll be repeating yourself.  Then, you lose the scare effect.

So can the ladies be effective horror movie killers?  They can, at least for a while, but it’ll take some doing to keep them all fresh.

Bloody Disgusting reports that French music video/commercial director Laurent Briet is in the running to direct a sequel to The Strangers.

The original film saw a couple being terrorized throughout the night and finally murdered in the morning.

Writer/director of the original, Bryan Bertino has penned the script which will apparently take place in a trailer park. Shooting is set to begin this summer.

Briet previously worked on special effects for The Ring and the short film Little Minx Exquisite Corpse: Rope a Dope.

I have to admit, starting from the very moment I caught the trailers for The Strangers, I was downright engrossed.  A movie that revolved around a home invasion in the middle of nowhere, possibly based on a true story??  The very idea had me double-checking the locks on my house doors at night.  After all, I TOO live in the middle of nowhere, and once this kind of terror comes to the middle of nowhere, well, no one’s safe.

The plot, which as I mentioned was based on a true story (to what extent is difficult to say and even harder to prove–I went rummaging around the internet for days after I first heard about it and frankly, I found nothing but a fat lot of nothing), centers on a couple in deep relationship trouble who’ve gone out to a small vacation home to settle their hash and possibly break up.  This agenda is interrupted by the gradually building appearance of three random lunatics who want to kill the couple.

Why?  Well, I’ll tell you that part in a minute.  It may well be the scariest part of the whole movie and I want to spring it on you at the end. Just like they did.

When I actually managed to see The Strangers, it surpassed my every expectation.  Managing to be both claustrophobic and expansive, I still had a hard time believing that this kind of horror could be wrought from such a minimalist design, despite the fact that I’d literally JUST seen it going on in front of my very eyes.  I mean, come on–we’ve got basically five characters.  Everyone else involved in this is essentially a nonperson who’s only got a couple minutes of screen time.  We’ve got one real set–the house and its immediate environs like a barn and a small chunk of woods and a street near the house.  All of this happens in approximately five, maybe six hours of real time (from late night to sunrise that same morning) and the result is a white-hot terror experience unlike literally anything before it.

Seriously–can you find a parallel here?  Anything I could come up with for a parallel on this fell horribly short.  I tried comparing it to early Craven, and came up a complete loss.  I tried Romero, and it wasn’t a good match there either.  A series of titles and directors passed through my mind, and nothing stuck.  If there IS a parallel for The Strangers, man, I wish somebody’d fill me in, because I want to see it.  Especially if it’s anywhere NEAR as good as what I just got done watching.

Oh…and the ending.  Yes, the ending may well be the scariest part of the whole affair.  You see, just before the evil killer types finally catch up with our heroic couple, the female half of the heroic couple makes the mistake of asking her tormentors, why?  Why have they come to kill them?  Surely they haven’t WRONGED these lunatic monsters in some way!

The answer you’ll get out of these wackjobs is easily the single scariest four words I’ve heard in a movie in some time.

For those of you who haven’t seen it–and I wholeheartedly recommend that you do–don’t read the last line.  Because that’s the answer to our heroic couple’s question, and it’s a spoiler:

“Because you were home.”

From Variety comes word that Rogue Pictures is planning a sequel to The Strangers, a recently released low-budget horror film that was popular with audiences and critics alike.

The site notes that Bryan Bertino, who wrote and directed the original, is penning the sequel, though it is yet to be determined who will helm the film. The original took $9 million to make, but took over $54 million at the box office.

The story followed a terrorized couple whose home is invaded by three masked assailants. Liv Tyler along with several villains from the original are expected to return. The sequel is slated to begin shooting early next year.