'Strangers' Sequel Only Has Room for More of the Same… Doesn't It?
The success of this movie confuses the hell out of me
The trailer for The Strangers was first shown at the 2007 Comic Con. It was expected to hit theaters that fall, but was ultimately pushed all the way to May 2008. Based on the promotion of the film I didn't notice anything in particular that would warrant the film a prime release slot, but the $52 million it made off a $9 million budget proves something. Whether it proves audiences were itching for a horror film in the summer or they actually liked it can't exactly be determined. I know I thought it was just shy of awful. This was just another film featuring people making silly decisions under duress and outside of some creepy masks I don't think it offered the genre anything of interest.
Of course, when you pull in numbers like that and have an open-ended ending as this film did a sequel is pretty much a guarantee and that guarantee has come to fruition as writer/director Bryan Bertino is coming back to pen the sequel, but it is not yet clear if he will direct. Where the story will go is unclear, but the expectation is Liv Tyler will return, which makes it sound so unoriginal and silly I can hardly muster any excitement. For those that have seen the film you will probably know why this is an annoying plot device and those that haven't seen it hopefully don't care.
The Strangers was Bertino's first directorial outing and considering it had a comparable box-office performance to 2004's Saw Bertino is likely to be in something of demand as he is already penning and planning on directing the thriller Black and is rewriting to direct Alone. Hopefully his career won't hit the skids as the careers of Saw creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell appear to have done outside of producing Saw films and now writing "Saw: The Game", which I would hardly be impressed with if I were them.
The bad news (in my opinion) is that Rogue is looking at The Strangers as a potential franchise a la Scream and Saw. However, if they stick to the tiny budget it will only mean cash for the genre house as getting enough people into theaters to fulfill a small budget and then reap the rewards of an unrated DVD release is all too easy these days. Too bad it is the audience that pays the price for mediocre films, a description the first film couldn't even meet.
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