Mise-En-Scene: The Strangers

Jared Potts
Ms. Reeves
Film/Capstone
4 November 2012
Mise-en-Scene: The Strangers The Strangers (Bertino) is a 2008 horror/thriller film, directed by Bryan Bertino, and starring Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman. Based on true events, The Strangers, tells of a young couple, Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler) and James Hoyt (Scott Speedman), who stay in the Hoyts’ rural summer home after attending a wedding. Throughout the night, three people in masks (Kip Weeks, Gemma Ward, and Laura Margolis), one man and two women, terrorize this couple, playing cruel tricks on them, and then attacking them later. This film is a film that really stands out in most of today’s horror movies. While many psychological horror/thriller movies today focus on gore and having
Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman are great in their roles as the main victims of the three masked assailants. Another great thing about the actors in this film is that they are not major, award-winning Hollywood actors that everybody has heard of. This is an advantage because if this movie starred Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, then many people wouldn’t have taken it so seriously. Liv Tyler is probably the most known actor of the group, mainly because of her father, who is a celebrity himself. The three strangers are played by Kip Weeks, Gemma Ward, and Laura Margolis. These actors are definitely not known by much of the public, and have acted in few movies and shows. They played the three masked invaders to perfection. Their parts were not played too dramatically and overly violent. Instead they portrayed the masked assailants in a creepy, sneaky, sly, and ghost like manner. This intensifies the overall eeriness of the situation, because you do not know when they will pop up next. Out of all three, Gemma Ward, who played the blonde girl in the doll face mask, definitely stood out. Her character was the only of the three invaders to have dialogue, which she only uses a few times in this film. Her character can be easily seen as a scary person to the viewers. She uses a monotone voice for her character, showing that her character has no emotion and that she will not feel any remorse in anything that she does. Examples include
Just the perfect color and lighting for this movie. This movie is shot in color, but the lighting in most of this movie is dimmed, which makes up the perfect creepy atmosphere. Many lights are lamplights or firelight, from the fireplace. In some scenes, when the power is on, there are some brighter lights in the house, but not too bright for the viewer. Instead, these lights make up a perfect golden-yellow atmosphere. When mixing with the characters themselves, the lighting is phenomenal. At the beginning, the young blonde woman is the first to appear out of the three strangers. When she knocks on the couple’s door at four in the morning, to which they answer, she is not yet wearing a mask. But in the darkness, you can only see her figure. As they talk to her, her face is shadowed out so that the viewer and the couple cannot see what she looks like. Of course, their faces are never revealed in the film. The brightest scenes in The Strangers, are at the end, when it is daylight out. In the daylight, it is shown what resulted in the horrific events that occurred in the night, when the two Mormon boys discover the wrecked house and the