The Strangers: Chapter 1-A Decently Tense little Horror Film Plagued By Unlikeable LEads Making Dumb Decisions

The Strangers has its fair share of intense moments. There are moments of well-handled, pent-up tension that gets released through relatively well-handled jump scares. The film is also well-made, with a clean look and night lighting that adds to the tension without making everything dark and visually incomprehensible.

But that means little if the characters followed throughout the 90-minute runtime are this unlikable and frustrating to watch. The film spends much of that brief runtime following the couple at the story's center before the titular Strangers attack them. These sections were annoying to sit through, as the couple has little to no chemistry between them, with their bickering/flirtatious exchanges meant to endure you to them feeling so forced and artificial. 

Then, once the actual horror starts and the masked Strangers start attacking, the characters keep making dumb decisions that frustrate me more and more, be it the girlfriend choosing to smoke weed while in an already paranoid state to the boyfriend choosing to hand to the girlfriend the only weapon they have and risk getting attacked or the girlfriend calling 911 while the killer is actively looking for her, risking getting caught. I'm usually not too bothered by dumb decisions in horror films, as I tend to accept that these characters are different people who make different choices than me, especially when they're in active danger. However, it bothered me since these characters felt so artificial in their writing that their choices felt like cheap ways to increase the tension. 

I can't harp on The Strangers too much since, as I said, it is well-made and has some intense moments. But, the film mostly felt dull and, at times, quite frustrating to watch due to its two leads. After a decent open-and-shut conclusive ending, the film ends on a pretty abrupt cliffhanger leading into the second "chapter" of a supposed trilogy of films. If that's the case and there are two more films, I hope the characters are better written because then I'd have something compelling to latch onto, aside from some decently tense scenes.

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