"Torture-porn" has obviously become common phrase between movie-goers. "The Saw Series", "Hostel", "Vacancy", and "Wolf Creek" for example. So along comes "The Strangers", just another unmemorable splatter-flick with few scares and little-to-no suspense, right? Well, hardly so, the entire movie was wholesomely entertaining, intense, chilling revel. By far the most daunting, suspenseful, and exuberant film I've seen this year.

The film begins with blatant tension between a young couple driving to their summer home in the middle of the night. We shortly come to realize that the man, James, has just proposed to his girlfriend, Kristen, but apparently she declined, claiming she wasn't ready yet. The first 15 minutes of the film center around their melting relationship as they try to put the night behind them and relieve the tautness emerging between them. When James leaves the house to take a breather and muse over what a failure the night has been, Kristen is terrorized by a masked man and in the house, which only begins the night of foreboding horror.

When James returns home, he discovers a trepidated Kristen in her bedroom, nearly delirious in terror, and the rest of the film beautifully maintains this atmosphere of dread, with three masked strangers taunting them throughout the house, with the couple desperately trying to reach for help and hide from the seemingly ubiquitous psychopaths. Bertino has successfully placed us in the position of a victim, hammering us as much as he does his prey, involving us with every single movement and sensation. He's a born director of angst and affliction.

Recently, there have been numerous horror films that rely mostly on violence and gore, and there've been just as many that rely on suspense, but the directors usually have no idea what they're doing with the latter, and they end up with a film that merely drags and drags and drags until it bleeds stumps. The Strangers is one of the few horror movies I've seen that uncannily mixes both thematics and perfectly constructs a film that isn't tedious nor agonzingly dull. It's always on its feet, never on lockstep motion, and when you catch a glimpse of threat that may break this chain, it's overcome by the director's limitless imagination in the genre.

The film holds the premise of a common slasher film, but it's actually quite terrifying, keenly-paced, and executed in such stark and winning manner (certainly helped by Liv Tyler's superb performance, capturing every essence of the word 'panic'), it's hardly comparable to the likes of awful "dead-teenager" movies.

8/10