‘The Strangers: Chapter 1’ Is a Whole New Level of Brainless Horror Movie

Bryan Bertino’s 2008 The Strangers is one of the millennium’s finest horror films, and a large part of its success stems from the fact that it doesn’t cheat by making its main characters morons. Faced with a home-intrusion nightmare carried out by three silent fiends, two wearing old-timey masks and the other boasting a burlap bag over his head, its protagonists (Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) routinely assess their situation logically and react accordingly, thereby eliciting urgent...