The couple was asking for it. All of it. *spoilers*
I just finished watching "The Strangers" and thought it was your typical standard horror/thriller, kinda the stuff you can catch on cable. Nothing creative, original, gory, or truly terrifying. I dismissed it immediately. But then the more I thought about, the more I looked deeper into it, it became quite twisted and profoundly disturbing.
It was like the couple was asking to be stalked, terrorized, victimized. They wanted to die. The way they behaved, the tactics they chose, the choices they made, *everything* they did set themselves up to be the perfect victims, in quite the operatic fashion. The whole film was their elaborate set-up for their brutal victimization, that they welcomed with open arms. The viewers were only taken along for the ride.
Liv Tyler's performance was creepy and unsettling, not because she was terrorized, but because her character romanticized the role of the victim so well, she relished every moment of being teased, terrorized, tormented and victimized. There are moments in the film where the strangers close in on her, and she looks aroused, titillated, not alarmed or terrified.
No struggles, no talking, no negotiating, no planning, no confrontation, no analysis of the situation or perpetrators. The couple avoided every logical way to get out the situation. Why? Because the couple wanted it to happen. They were asking for it. It was no coincidence.
"The Strangers," these masked, faceless figures, nameless apparitions brought out of the couple's subconscious into reality, were only taskmasters. The couple set the tone, the story, how they wanted it to play out, how they wanted their killers to appear, look like, the tactics they chose, etc, and "The Strangers" just followed queue.
The ending sequence where they are killed was a ritual. There was something weirdly intimate about it. It was pure surrender. Didn't make much sense to the viewers, but to the couple, it was all too familiar a sequence of events.
I'd like to know what you think about my take on it.