Critics Scoreboard
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Average Critic Score:
47
(27 sources)
47
(27 sources)
-
91
The Onion (A.V. Club)
It isn't particularly original--for one, it owes an unacknowledged debt to the French film "Them"--but as an exercise in controlled mayhem, horror movies don't get much scarier. Read Full Review » -
90
The New York Times
This is no splatter movie: spare, suspenseful and brilliantly invested in silence, Bryan Bertino's debut feature unfolds in a slow crescendo of intimidation. Read Full Review » -
80
The Hollywood Reporter
A spare, creepily atmospheric psychological thriller with a death grip on the psychological aspect. Read Full Review » -
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Both Speedman and Tyler deliver solid, nuanced performances as a couple caught at the most fragile moment in their relationship. Read Full Review » -
75
TV Guide
There's nothing more to it than meets the eye, but Bertino understands the mechanics of suspense and knows how to use them. Read Full Review » -
75
Chicago Tribune
Bertino's taut, spare thriller is plenty scary without relying on pseudo-historical context. Anchored by convincing performances from Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler, both of whom elevate their roles above the standard horror-movie caricature, this is an enormously unsettling movie. Read Full Review » -
75
ReelViews
This is one of those rare horror movies that concentrates on suspense and terror rather than on gore and a high body count. Read Full Review » -
70
Village Voice
Bertino teases with the unknown until he's left no pimple ungoosed. Sometimes avoiding the synapse-raping bad habits of splat packers Eli Roth and Alexandre Aja is its own reward; doing so without also submitting to Michael Haneke-style hand-slapping is nearly monumental. Read Full Review » -
70
Variety
It's all efficiently nerve-jangling, with Tyler and Speedman credibly registering every hue of panic. Still, after such a long, creepy, cannily restrained buildup, it must be said the resolution is rather flat, a full-circle postscript rote. Read Full Review » -
70
Chicago Reader
There's nothing remotely new here, but the movie has the taut, queasy feel of an early 70s drive-in shocker: old-fashioned suspense without any guarantee of old-fashioned mercy. Read Full Review » -
67
Entertainment Weekly
Bryan Bertino, stages The Strangers' early scenes with spooky panache...But then comes the blood, the shrieking midnight chase scenes, the anything-goes over-the-top-ness. In other words, everything that we liked the movie for not being. Read Full Review » -
67
Austin Chronicle
Younger viewers who've cut their teeth on the instant horrors of modern "torture porn" may find The Stranger's pace and psychological upsets more slow-going than they might like. Yet a film like this may be just the bracing corrective the modern horror film needs. Read Full Review » -
60
New York Daily News
Bertino does an excellent job building dread, especially during the first half of the movie. Every silence, pause and sudden noise startles - and the results, frankly, are more frightening than the graphic torture scenes in movies like "Hostel" and "Saw." Read Full Review » -
60
Film Threat
Ultimately, The Strangers does succeed in the sense that it offers a riveting, vastly credible enactment of everyone's worst nightmare. Read Full Review » -
50
Portland Oregonian
As pointless suspense exercises go, The Strangers at least gets off to a good start. Read Full Review » -
50
Miami Herald
You can only string an audience along for so long with scary masks and sudden appearances at the window, and after a while, the suspense starts seeping out of The Strangers, because you realize that's all there's going to be to the movie. Read Full Review » -
38
Chicago Sun-Times
The movie deserves more stars for its bottom-line craft, but all the craft in the world can't redeem its story. Read Full Review » -
30
NPR
What possessed Liv Tyler to take a role in this sadistic, unmotivated home-invasion flick. Read Full Review » -
25
Christian Science Monitor
Sometimes, dear reader, there's no place like home, and that's just where you should be when this gorefest opens at a theater near you. Read Full Review » -
25
San Francisco Chronicle
Here's the tricky thing about The Strangers. Sure, it uses cinema to ends that are objectionable and vile ... but it does it well, with more than usual skill. Read Full Review » -
25
Charlotte Observer
Bertino directs at a funereal pace. Speedman remains comatose, though Tyler flickers fitfully to life. The mournful look on her face suggests she's remembering the days when she was given more psychologically complex scripts, such as "Armageddon." Read Full Review » -
25
Philadelphia Inquirer
No one is getting at anything in The Strangers, except the cheapest, ugliest kind of sadistic titillation. Read Full Review » -
25
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Is Hollywood so disconnected from its past and bankrupt of ideas that it doesn't even know this movie is a screaming cliché? Read Full Review » -
20
Washington Post
I like watching snakes eat mice just as much as the next fella, maybe even more, but The Strangers turns the gobble-'em-up into an ordeal. It's a fraud from start to finish. Read Full Review » -
12
New York Post
The bad movie in my head was far better than the one on-screen, which offers no twists at all. A twist? There isn't even a curl or a bend. Read Full Review » -
12
Boston Globe
A horror film with a moral. No matter how nasty a gang of murderers is, the moviemaker calling the shots is ultimately worse. Read Full Review » -
0
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