The Strangers: Knock Knock

Having just come off of a month when I made a point of watching nothing but the kind of stuff I usually avoid, I think that for the most part, the take-away is that I avoid those kinds of film for a reason. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t learn anything, but very little changed my mind. It didn’t feel like a bummer or anything, but I came out the other side looking forward to sinking my teeth-eyes into stuff that seemed promising.

And so I decided to start with The Strangers. I know this came out awhile ago, but this isn’t my first shot at it - I’ve started it a couple of times in the past and each time I’ve had to shut it off. Not because it’s bad, but because it creeped me out so much that both times I ended up saying “nope, not today.” I finally made it all the way through, and yep, it’s an absolute masterclass in tension and threat, with an impeccable sense of restraint.

The films opens with a title card and narration explaining that it’s based on true events. Is it? Maybe, maybe not, but if nothing else it reminds me of the opening to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, that stark title card and somber voiceover promising something grim. And it definitely starts grim. We get the interior of a house, petals scattered on a bed, more petals scattered around the kind of box that contains an engagement ring, a record running into its end groove on the turntable, over and over. Glass on the floor. A shotgun sitting out, along with an axe. Blood on the wall. This is the aftermath of something terrible, discovered by two young missionaries who end up making a panicky 911 call instead.

The night before, James and Kristen are coming back from a wedding, arriving at the house we’ve just seen. It’s all set up for something romantic, petals everywhere and a bottle of champagne with two glasses out, but as we see them, Kristen has dried tears on her face and James is extremely quiet. There’s an awkwardness between them. Nothing is really said out loud, but it’s easy enough to figure out. James asked her the kind of question that accompanies flowers and champagne, and he didn’t get the answer he was expecting. So here they are, left to make the drive back to a home decorated for a celebration that will never happen. So what we have at this point is essentially a drama about a moment in their relationship that has just turned into something else. Take out the opening title card and scene and this could just as easily be a straightforward drama, and I really like that about it. I like horror movies that are dramas until they aren’t, that are about actual people with feelings and lives. There’s a sad tentativeness to them, a lot of feelings all happening at once. James is calling his best friend to come get him as soon as he sobers up, to ride back with him, to spare Kristen an extremely awkward road trip. He’ll sleep on the couch. Kristen takes a bath and cries. The pain they’re both experiencing is evident.

And then there’s a knock on the door.

What this relationship drama turns into is a siege film, but one that is almost excruciatingly patient. Most siege films are loud, intense, mile-a-minute once they get started, but this film is very minimal and careful in its approach. It’s all about little moments, blink-and-you-miss-it moments, sudden, sharp moments that stab into an uneasy quiet. Really important beats as often as not happen silently in the background, where figures gradually emerge from the shadows, or are suddenly there under a single streetlight, and then gone again. It’s bad when you can see them because you know they’re there, but it’s even worse when you can't see them because you don’t know where they’ve gone and that is worse. The tension is constant, and there’s never really a moment where the masked figures menacing James and Kristen aren’t in control of the situation. It’s very cat-and-mouse, in the classic sense of a cat toying with its prey until it’s exhausted, only then finishing it off.

This sense of restraint carries through to the performances, much to the film’s benefit. Dialogue is sparse and to the point, but you still get a sense of who these people are because the actors do a very good job of playing actual people, complicated and vulnerable. Kristen and James begin the film navigating a lot of different feelings, it’s clear from the performance that Kristen loves him and doesn’t like that she’s hurt him, but isn’t ready for marriage yet. She doesn’t want to leave him but doesn’t know what comes next, either. James is feeling crushed, rejected, humiliated, all of the intended romantic gestures for what was supposed to be a special night surrounding him, shouting out his failure. It makes everything that follows even worse, in the sense that they’re already so devastated, and we’re entering their story on a tragedy. And then when everything pops off, when it becomes about life and death, Kristen responds by focusing on staying alive and James responds by trying to be the big strong protector, trying to be her knight in shining armor. But in doing so, he’s dismissive of Kristen, telling her she couldn’t have seen what she saw. He’s sort of in denial but also hellbent on taking charge, and so maybe we can see why she wasn’t ready to marry him just yet. It’s not really his fault, he’s a pretty traditionally masculine guy who’s just been dealt a serious blow to his self-image and he’s trying to recover, to reassert himself. He isn’t a coward or a bully, but it’s pretty clear pretty quick how inadequate his response is going to be in the current situation. And none of this is spelled out in neon, it’s all little asides and how they carry themselves. We get a sense of who they are as people just by watching them, which is what you want.

The same care that goes into pacing and performance is also evident in the cinematography. It uses a lot of hand-held camerawork, which serves to make everything feels more intimate at the start and then more urgent the further in we get, it’s not found-footage but there’s an immediacy to it as a result. There are also shots that are very still, very specifically composed to draw our attention in a specific direction, to great effect. Most of the film takes place very late at night, so the streets are empty and everything is quiet. Everyone’s asleep, and the house is deep in the country so the nearest neighbor is nowhere close. The isolation is palpable. And the house itself is very much a home, lots of cozy wood paneling and well-worn furniture, a place on the wall where James and his brother’s heights have been recorded over the years. James’ intentions mean there’s a lot of warm light from candles, and because it’s late at night, there are lots of shadows and isolated light sources. The assailants are all wearing white masks, so, like Michael Myers before them, they sort of fade in and out of the shadows, their stark, ghostly faces sometimes just hanging in the darkness.

There’s a refreshing lack of explanation here, a refusal to give us any kind of concrete answers or explanations for what we’ve just witnessed. Even when the assailants finally remove their masks, we never see their faces. There is no grand, elaborate reason for all of this, no monologuing. It just is, and the sun rises and we come back to where we began, knowing everything that happened the night before. It’s simple and horrible and stark and plain. It’s horror, and it’s exactly what I needed after a month of things missing the mark in one way or another.

IMDB entry
Available on Netflix
Available on Amazon