It is EXTREMELY rare for a killer to have no motive whatsoever. In real life anyways. Obviously they don't need to have a reason to kill... but they always do.
What I meant was that killers do not always have a reason that is specifically linked to their particular victim or to one specific trauma or incident. It's not that killers lack motivation, it's that it isn't always necessary for a movie to spell out why a killer chooses to kill. Motives exist, but they are not always relevant.
I'm sure that the killer in the movie had a reason (probably psychological rather than material). But I don't think that the reason is always a connection to the victim (in this case he sort of stumbles across Maddie while pursuing the neighbor), and a killer's motivation is not always apparent to the victim.
Consider Gary Ridgeway, also known as the Green River Killer (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Ridgway).
What was his motivation? I mean, obviously there is a sexual element, but that doesn't explain it. There are plenty of people with high sex drives, a history of parents fighting, and military service who do not go on to murder dozens of women. And to his victims it would not have been clear why he was killing them. If you were a fly on the wall watching one of his murders, you probably wouldn't find out why either.
Maybe a more apt comparison would be Robert Hansen (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hansen) who abducted women, raped them, and then hunted them through the woods using guns and other weapons. His Wikipedia entry offers details about his youth that seem to point to motive (bullying, dysfunctional relationship with dad, resentment of girls who rejected him), but again those are things that many children/teens endure. What makes this guy a killer? Would any of those women he killed have understood why this was happening to them as he stalked them through the woods? Would it have made any difference to them or to their story?
When a movie about a killer is centered on the killer, I think it's important to develop the character which often includes motivation for the murders. But when a movie is centered on a protagonist (in this case Maddie) I don't think it's necessary to know the killer's motive. It might be
interesting to know why the killer does what he does, but I don't think it's necessary and I don't think that not knowing hurts the movie.
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dtrautwein
7 years ago
But, what? There was nothing there to drive his motivation to kill or inform the audience with any sense of a understanding why. While I'm not a big fan of The Strangers at least we got a "Because you were home." Those little things like that tell you so much about the characters.
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Stovepipe99
7 years ago
There was nothing there to drive his motivation to kill or inform the audience with any sense of a understanding why.
I think that there are several implicit clues about the kind of person the killer is. These are only my interpretation, of course, but I felt like I knew all I needed to know about him.
1) The way that he kills the neighbor has a TON of sexual overtones. He tells Maddie that he will come into the house when she wants him. I think that he gets off on fear and domination. His threat to Maddie in the bathroom combines sexual and violent imagery ("I bet if I hit the right spot I can make you scream").
2) This isn't a killer who is looking for a real challenge. Sometimes killers in movies seem to yearn for an opponent who will truly test them, and even seem pleased when one of their victims tries to fight back. This killer has no qualms about "cheating" to kill the male neighbor, even saying that he knew he couldn't beat him in a fair fight. Maddie clearly hits a nerve when she calls him a coward.
3) This killer is impulsive and petty. The notches on the crossbow seem to indicate that he's done this before. We have no reason to assume that he knew the neighbor, yet he kills her in a way that is associated with people who are killing both intimately and in a frenzy (the repeated stabbing).
My sense was that this was a man who felt disrespected, especially by women. I think that he kills out of a desire to dominate and have power over others. But like most petty people he has no real code of honor. If you start from the fact that he gets off on terrorizing people (most likely women) to feel powerful, his actions all make sense to me. And it especially makes sense why he would be so angry that a woman--a woman with a disability--would prove to be such a challenge.
I feel like I recognized the kind of person he was--the neck tattoos spoke volumes. I wish I could find the link, but there was an article I read (pretty heartbreaking) about a lesbian couple who were attacked in their home by a man. No reason other than he was angry at not having enough female attention and wanted to terrorize and humiliate them. That kind of man and that kind of anger were things I understood watching the movie.
I understand the desire to know why he was doing it, but in the end I'm not sure what difference it makes. I don't feel like finding out his mom didn't hug him enough or that his older sister bullied him or that his ex-girlfriend humiliated him adds anything to the story for me. The director deliberately chose to keep the motivation a secret.
You can read the director himself address the question of motivation in this post he wrote about the movie:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/mike-flanagan/regarding-the-why/10153664900868087.
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