Perpetual Presence of Masked Demons

By Mugees Ul Kaisar                 

Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers is a brilliant and immensely rich piece of cinematic work. However, it isn’t fully clear as to whether it is a typical horror film or a psychological horror? I want to read it as the latter. This ambiguity is of course its richness. If taken as a typical “home invasion” horror movie, which is largely its conventional interpretation, it is horrific for its pointlessness as some reviewers have rightly pointed out. A couple spending a night inside of a supposedly safe haven (a home) is attacked by three strangers with masks put on without the script ever revealing to us as to why the whole episode is taking place, to the end of it, except one line which one of the murderers utters i.e. “because you were home” in response to one of the victim’s last dreadful question, “why are you doing this?”. The pointlessness multiplies the horror of the attack simply because it shows the horrific potentiality of a fatal intrusion by any psychopath who could just kill you simply because you were having a good time minding your own business. The pointlessness of suffering increases its already unsettling dreadfulness. The (ultimate) meaninglessness of evil and suffering is how hell might look like. However, this may not after all be completely pointless. The realities of sociopaths and the presence of a disproportionate & hierarchic world warrant serious consideration and examination in the actual cases of home invasion events. 

The movie begins with the introduction of a strained relationship between the couple. This is significant; a point not to be missed. It is the central hermeneutic in our reading of the film as a piece of psychological horror. Putting a perfectly happy couple with no qualms in their relationship could have made the physical “home invasion” interpretation more unsettling. Isn’t it precisely at the moment of heavenly perfection that the snake intrudes into the Garden of Eden? Isn’t the intrusion of disruption precisely at the moment of perfection which makes the disruption qualitatively more disrupting? So, why begin with an unnervingly strained relationship between the two loved ones? The reading of the present review is that the whole episode (of the brutal attack and the subsequent terror) is a symbolic representation of that strained relationship itself, between the woman and her lover. 

The reason that we have put the woman at the centre of the relationship is because her lover gradually fades out of the show towards the latter part of the movie. At the end, before the killing scene, only the woman speaks whilst her lover passively looks at her, helplessly, looking into her eyes, silently, whilst she, for the very last time, tells him that she loves him. Moreover, in the last scene of the movie where two teenage boys crash into the forsaken crime scene, checking various rooms and details of the house, finally get near to the woman’s blood draped body, where she suddenly & aggressively wakes up with reminiscent shock and horror, depicting that the only person still alive in the house is the woman. The way she wakes up is quite noteworthy; it is as if she has broken free of a terrible nightmare. The beginning of the movie tells us that the woman has recently declined the marriage proposal of her lover. Is it the case that possibly the potential concerns, doubts, apprehensions & obscurities – that she has regarding the relationship between herself and her lover – are exactly what the whole episode of the movie is symbolically representing as an attack by intruders? 

The present interpretation focuses on the focal point of human relationships. The fantasy of a perfect relationship is always under attack from various misunderstandings, contingencies and misgivings.  Home or a safe haven is the imagination of a perfect heavenly relationship which is always vulnerable to threats. The point to note, however, is that the three attackers, in the movie, come with their masks on. Who are these masked attackers? A relationship is always under threat but from whom? The threat can be both inner and outer. What is common to these threats is the element of the unsettling surprise – the darkness always lurks in the “unknown”. Either it can be our own psychological shortcomings, like misinterpreting each other’s personalities, behaviours, words, actions – not to mention the interplay of inherent psychological complexes – and so forth; or it can be a completely random external contingency of the world that simply crashes into the prospect of a relationship. Masked demons, nevertheless, are always nearby, aiming to ambush us. Most of the times, it is our own inner complexities that upset or undo our relationships. The bug of “suspicion” or doubt, for example, is no less than a masked demon lurking deep within us. 

The cinematography within the movie seems to support this thesis. We can note this especially through the brilliant employment of the sound; doors banging, metals ringing from distance, rustling sound of leaves, nearby in the woods – as the woman is constantly running around the home and the nearby garage, she hears the sounds which constantly lurk on the outside and yet they do not enter upon her fully, clearly. This explains the apparent vagueness of the attack. The time taking tortuous project of the masked attackers shows how seemingly harmless knock on the door, a slight misunderstanding, a small doubt, an unknown jealous “third”, or the unpredictability (contingency) of reality itself can gradually undo a whole house/relationship. 

• Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir Observer

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