Unsatisfying Ending, The Strangers

Director Bryan Bertino The Strangers Copycat Horror With Bad Ending

© Dan Benamor

Jun 6, 2008

The Ending to The Strangers: Unsatisfying?

For most of its runtime, The Strangers is a fairly routine killers-in-the-house film. If there was anything resembling major creative bravery in The Strangers, it was the ending. For those who don’t wish to have the ending to The Strangers, and the topically relevant Funny Games, ruined for them, stop reading now.

Media Reception

A number of critics commented on the ending to The Strangers, mostly in the negative. Roger Ebert wrote his first reaction was, “What a maddening, nihilistic, infuriating ending!” Dennis Harvey of Variety wrote, “It must be said the resolution is rather flat, a full-circle postscript rote.” Given the film’s generic story apart from the ending, some commentary on said ending was to be expected.

Comparing The Strangers to Funny Games

Director Michael Haneke’s Funny Games is the art-house spoof of The Strangers. It tells, superficially, the same story. The difference is Haneke wants the audience to really consider why they enjoy such grisly entertainment and their moral implication in consuming it. The Strangers' writer-director Bryan Bertino doesn’t have such lofty aspirations. In both films the “good guys” perish in the end, but in Haneke’s film this is to undermine audience enjoyment, a major goal of Funny Games overall.

Considering Intent

In The Strangers the “good guys” also die at the end, but for what? Bertino could have certainly found another “true story” to be inspired by where the innocents escaped. Is the ending meant to pull the rug out from an audience expecting a happier finale? This too is possible, but what further artistic merit is accomplishing by this apart from a simple bait-and-switch? It doesn’t really seem there is any.

Hypocrisy of Bertino

One could argue by having his characters very plainly tied up and stabbed to death Bertino is emphasizing the “reality” of the situation and refusing to allow the audience to enjoy the kill (much like Haneke does throughout Funny Games). But the entire allure of this movie to audiences is that it allows them to do precisely that. The preceding 80 minutes allow the audience to easily enjoy watching two innocent people run for their lives. So the ending is disingenuous if viewed from this perspective.

Bottom Line for Bertino

If The Strangers proved anything though, it’s this: there remains a market for copycat horror, that’s easily digestible. Much like the recent Prom Night, The Strangers promises nothing new, and delivers very nearly nothing new (save for the ending). Yet it opened strong at the box office, much like Prom Night. It seems the American movie-going public doesn’t care how derivative their entertainment is, as long as it doesn’t upset them too much. Bertino’s ending may have been unorthodox, but the rest of his movie was not, hence its financial success. It’s no coincidence the entirely unorthodox Funny Games flopped at the box office.

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