It’s a big week for fans of the home invasion horror subgenre, as 2008’s The Strangers lands on Blu-ray while the film’s sequel, The Strangers: Prey at Night, hits theaters. One of the original film’s special features, which chronicles the making of the film, revealed that star Liv Tyler was so committed to giving audiences an authentic performance that she refused to interact with the film’s masked antagonists so that when she saw them for the first time, she could convey her true terror.
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“I got strict instructions not to let Liv see me in my mask before we shot,” Laura Margolis, who plays the “Pin-Up Girl” intruder revealed on the Blu-ray . “The first scene that I shot was stalking Liv Tyler outside of the barn. I had been told that she really wanted to be scared. She didn’t want to have to fake it, and so it was my responsibility to really scare her. So we shot that scene, I ran at her, she started actually screaming, and then she kicked me away. … [director] Bryan [Bertino] and the producers said I did a good job.”
In the film, “After a 4 a.m. knock at the door and a haunting voice, Kristen McKay (Tyler) and James Hoyt (Scott Speedman, Underworld) find that their remote getaway becomes a night of psychological terror as three masked strangers invade. Faced with inscrutable tormentors, Kristen and James must go beyond what they think they’re able to endure if they have any hope to survive.”
While The Strangers might not have been the box office sensation of films like The Conjuring or IT, the movie did gain a fervent fan following, often considering it one of the defining home invasion films of this generation.
The sequel follows a family whose road trip takes a turn when they arrive at a secluded mobile home park and after the power goes out they decide to hunker down for the night in a borrowed trailer. Under the cover of darkness, three familiar masked psychopaths pay them a visit to test their every limit.
Christina Hendricks, Bailee Madison, Lewis Pullman, and Martin Henderson star in the sequel, with the killers being played by Emma Bellomy as Dollface, Lea Enslin as Pin-Up Girl, and Damian Maffei as the Man in the Mask.
The sequel was co-written by Bertino and Ben Katai with 47 Meters Down director Johannes Roberts at the helm.
The Strangers is available now on Blu-ray and The Strangers: Prey at Night hits theaters this Friday.
Are you a fan of the home invasion subgenre of horror? Let us know in the comments below!
[H/T Entertainment Weekly]
