Strangers, The

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

It isn't particularly original--for one, it owes an unacknowledged debt to the French film "Them"--but as an exercise in controlled mayhem, horror movies don't get much scarier.

The New York Times Jeannette Catsoulis

This is no splatter movie: spare, suspenseful and brilliantly invested in silence, Bryan Bertino's debut feature unfolds in a slow crescendo of intimidation.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

A spare, creepily atmospheric psychological thriller with a death grip on the psychological aspect.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jennie Punter

Both Speedman and Tyler deliver solid, nuanced performances as a couple caught at the most fragile moment in their relationship.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

There's nothing more to it than meets the eye, but Bertino understands the mechanics of suspense and knows how to use them.

Chicago Tribune Jessica Reaves

Bertino's taut, spare thriller is plenty scary without relying on pseudo-historical context. Anchored by convincing performances from Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler, both of whom elevate their roles above the standard horror-movie caricature, this is an enormously unsettling movie.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

This is one of those rare horror movies that concentrates on suspense and terror rather than on gore and a high body count.

Village Voice Ed Gonzalez

Bertino teases with the unknown until he's left no pimple ungoosed. Sometimes avoiding the synapse-raping bad habits of splat packers Eli Roth and Alexandre Aja is its own reward; doing so without also submitting to Michael Haneke–style hand-slapping is nearly monumental.

Variety Dennis Harvey

It's all efficiently nerve-jangling, with Tyler and Speedman credibly registering every hue of panic. Still, after such a long, creepy, cannily restrained buildup, it must be said the resolution is rather flat, a full-circle postscript rote.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

There's nothing remotely new here, but the movie has the taut, queasy feel of an early 70s drive-in shocker: old-fashioned suspense without any guarantee of old-fashioned mercy.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Bryan Bertino, stages The Strangers' early scenes with spooky panache...But then comes the blood, the shrieking midnight chase scenes, the anything-goes over-the-top-ness. In other words, everything that we liked the movie for not being.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Younger viewers who've cut their teeth on the instant horrors of modern "torture porn" may find The Stranger's pace and psychological upsets more slow-going than they might like. Yet a film like this may be just the bracing corrective the modern horror film needs.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Bertino does an excellent job building dread, especially during the first half of the movie. Every silence, pause and sudden noise startles - and the results, frankly, are more frightening than the graphic torture scenes in movies like "Hostel" and "Saw."

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

Ultimately, The Strangers does succeed in the sense that it offers a riveting, vastly credible enactment of everyone's worst nightmare.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

As pointless suspense exercises go, The Strangers at least gets off to a good start.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

You can only string an audience along for so long with scary masks and sudden appearances at the window, and after a while, the suspense starts seeping out of The Strangers, because you realize that's all there's going to be to the movie.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie deserves more stars for its bottom-line craft, but all the craft in the world can't redeem its story.

NPR Bob Mondello

What possessed Liv Tyler to take a role in this sadistic, unmotivated home-invasion flick.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Sometimes, dear reader, there's no place like home, and that's just where you should be when this gorefest opens at a theater near you.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Here's the tricky thing about The Strangers. Sure, it uses cinema to ends that are objectionable and vile ... but it does it well, with more than usual skill.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Bertino directs at a funereal pace. Speedman remains comatose, though Tyler flickers fitfully to life. The mournful look on her face suggests she's remembering the days when she was given more psychologically complex scripts, such as "Armageddon."

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

No one is getting at anything in The Strangers, except the cheapest, ugliest kind of sadistic titillation.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Is Hollywood so disconnected from its past and bankrupt of ideas that it doesn't even know this movie is a screaming cliché?

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

I like watching snakes eat mice just as much as the next fella, maybe even more, but The Strangers turns the gobble-'em-up into an ordeal. It's a fraud from start to finish.

New York Post Kyle Smith

The bad movie in my head was far better than the one on-screen, which offers no twists at all. A twist? There isn't even a curl or a bend.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

A horror film with a moral. No matter how nasty a gang of murderers is, the moviemaker calling the shots is ultimately worse.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

All it offers is sadism, impure and simple.