Analysis of Horror genre and 'The Strangers'

'The Strangers' is a psychological, dramatic horror/thriller. Directed and produced by Bryan Bertino. It is about a young couple in an iscolated vacation home who are slowly terrorized by three pyscopaths. There is a definate psychological presence in this film as it is all about hearing creepy sounds, seeing people from far away, and the use of masks. Ther use of masks is an important role in this movie as you never see the psycopaths faces once, even when they take off their masks. The idea of this movie was the thought of iscolation and terror, being trapped in a house with three maniacs who want to kill you. The use of suspense is used perfectly even as there is no music (apart from the use of a jammed record player). Having no music to the movie also means that it feels more realistic to the audience therefore they can relate to the movie. This movie keeps everybody stuck to their seats for the whole movie as the tension builds through out the movie.

• This is a review from 'Maitland McDonagh' who works a reviewer for the 'TV guide'...
  

"First-time director Bryan Bertino's no-frills thriller is a throwback to the 1970s' heyday of nasty, relentless movies in which ordinary, unsuspecting folks are trapped and terrorized by remorseless sociopaths, right down to the solemn assurance that it's based on a true story. There's nothing more to it than meets the eye, but Bertino understands the mechanics of suspense and knows how to use them.

In the movie that we are filming ourselves, We have based a lot of our ideas on the movie 'The strangers'. This is because we are filming a psychological horror. It helps to have lots of different influences for our movie.

The Horror genre is a very interesting concept to deal with as you can have so many different ideas for a horror movie. Over the years the horror genre has developed from a normal psycho who kills a few people like the film 'Pyscho'. Now it has developed to psychological horros such as 'The strangers' or developing on a psychopath killer like the film 'saw'. The horror genre is now a very popular genre in cinemas. This is because they can be mixed with other type of genres, such as thrillers and comedy. Using the horror genre for our Coursework film was a very good choice, as we were able to say what type of horror movie we would do (Pyschological). We were also able to think about horror without boundries.

Cheers. x