The strangers analysis

The Strangers is a 2008 American suspense and horror film written and directed by Bryan Bertino, and starring Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman. The film revolves around a couple in a house that are being terrorized by 3 masked people. The film was marketed as an inspired true story.

The teaser trailer that I have analysed begins with clicking through a film slide. The clicking sound is made ambient so you get the feel of someone showing it to you. The film consists of family homes and has peaceful, old fashion music in the background. Under the pictures are words explaning why people buy there homes. As the slides go on the pictures become more violent and mysterious, the music changes to something more horrifying. Under the pictures it says: 'some people choose there homes for a completely different reason'. The picture then flickers into an actual shot. This shows that this is the house it is focusing on.

The sound is creepy (wind breeze) and goes into a long shot of a man lighting a candle. The man is wearing a suit so this gives the impression he is important or his job is. He lights a candle making the room slightly brighter. The room is dark and mysterious. It then changes between shots of a women and then back to them both together. It keeps flicking between different angles of this. The room is still very dark. You then hear a very loud knock on the door. By the way they react you know now that this is not going to be a pleasant person. This is a key giveaway of what genre the film is - Horror. It flashes to the woman standing next to the door “Hello” she says. She says this in a worried tone. You then hear something say “You’re going to die”. This is in a creepy tone.

After this it flashes to something dark across the screen, you see and hear the women screen. As it did in the beginning of the film it comes up with the film slide effect, going through them quickly with a deep dark tone upon these images. It then holds on a blurry image of a person/object. You don’t really understand what it actually is. It continues with this effect then every few frames it will pause on a shot. E.g. Knife. It also screams throughout this. You can see a masked character in some of these frames but it never comes completely clear. The end picture is a clear image of 3 masked people with the couple sitting.

It finishes with the title ‘The strangers’. It has a yellow, brown effect in the background, this shows it’s a dark murky place. It then has a black screen with the writing ‘Inspired by true events’. This makes the audience relate to the characters.
It then goes back to a film clip sequence with the girl crawling on the floor trying to get away. It then fades out.

I choose this trailer because in our film we are doing a horror film with a home alone effect. This is a good relation to our film.