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THE STRANGERS PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Jacqueline West,Poly Bernatene | 308 pages | 15 May 2014 | Puffin Books | 9780142425756 | English | United States The Stranger (TV Series – ) - IMDb The screenplay was inspired by two real-life events: the Manson family Tate murders , a multiple homicide, as well as a series of break-ins that occurred in Bertino's neighborhood as a child. Some journalists noted similarities between the film and the Keddie cabin murders that occurred in Keddie, California in , though Bertino did not cite this as a reference. Originally slated for a theatrical release in November , it was postponed before a theatrical release on May 30, Contemporary film scholars have interpreted it as a criticism of the perceived safety of pastoral life , as well as an exploration of stranger-on-stranger violence. In a secluded area, away from civilization, James Hoyt and Kristen McKay arrive at night to James' childhood summer home, returning from a friend's wedding. Tension abounds between the couple, as Kristen rejected James's marriage proposal to her after the reception. James calls his friend Mike and asks him to pick him up in the morning. A young blonde woman, whose face is obstructed by poor lighting, asks the couple "Is Tamara home? James goes for a drive to purchase a pack of cigarettes for Kristen; before he departs, he starts a fire in the hearth. Kristen realizes the chimney flue is closed, and attempts to open it; smoke emanating from the fire triggers a smoke alarm. Kristen attempts to disarm the smoke alarm when she is startled by another knock at the door; she drops the alarm on the floor, unnerved. She calls James' cellphone from the landline, but their call is cut short. Kristen returns to the kitchen, where, unbeknownst to her, a man—the Man in the Mask—watches her from an adjacent hallway. Kristen notices the smoke alarm she left on the floor is now sitting on a chair, and realizes someone else has been in the house. Upon going to retrieve her cell phone from the charger, she finds it is missing, and begins to panic. When she hears a noise from the backyard, she arms herself with a knife, and opens the curtains to find the Man in the Mask, staring at her. Screaming, she stumbles into the hallway, and watches as the front door is forced ajar. When she goes to push the door closed, the blonde woman, now in a doll mask—Dollface—peeks inside. After locking the door, Kristen hides in the bedroom and hears the strangers outside bashing the walls of the house. The noise eventually stops and James returns to the home. After she explains what has happened, he goes outside to the car to obtain his phone, whereupon he finds the car ransacked and vandalized, and sees Dollface watching him from afar. The couple attempt to leave in James' car but another woman in a pin-up girl mask—Pin-Up Girl—rear-ends them with a truck, forcing them to flee. Back inside the house, Kristen and James find a shotgun and wait for the intruders in a bedroom. Mike arrives and realizes something is wrong after seeing James's wrecked car. He enters the house, and James, mistaking him for one of the intruders, shoots him dead. Devastated, James remembers an old radio transmitter in the backyard shed. He leaves and encounters Pin-Up Girl, searching the backyard with a flashlight. When James tries to shoot her, the Man in the Mask knocks him unconscious, inadvertently discharging the gun. Kristen hears the shot and runs to the shed. She finds the radio, but Pin-Up Girl smashes it with an ax. Kristen rushes back to the house where she encounters Dollface, who taunts her with a knife, saying, "You're gonna die. At dawn, the couple awaken to find themselves tied to chairs in the living room with the strangers standing before them. Kristen demands, "Why are you doing this? The strangers unmask themselves to Kristen and James before taking turns stabbing them in the chest and abdomen. After, the strangers drive away in their truck, and come across two young boys on bicycles distributing religious tracts. Dollface comes out of the truck and asks if she can have one of their tract cards. One of the boys asks her, "Are you a sinner? One of the boys approaches Kristen's body and attempts to touch it. As he reaches out to her, Kristen, still alive, startles him by grabbing his hand and screaming. Unlike in eighties slasher horror, for example, where engaging in negative behavior such as drinking, doing drugs, having premarital sex are often forerunners to being killed by the killer s ; [here], death is random and unrelated to one's behavior. In The Horror Show Guide: The Ultimate Frightfest of Movies , Mike Mayo noted the film's "grim realism," writing that the main characters "could have wandered out of a gloomy Ingmar Bergman film," ultimately branding the film as an example of "naturalistic domestic horror" akin to Michael Haneke 's Funny Games. The film has also been noted by scholar Philip Simpson as highlighting "the divide between the underprivileged and privileged classes," as well as for its inversion of commonly-held beliefs about violence in urban areas and pastoral ethics: " The Strangers , as many horror films do One might call the narrative sensibility informing The Strangers 'pastoral paranoia', in that danger lurks among the rough folk of the country rather than the suburbs and cities. Of course, it may be that provincial violence is a result of contamination, or in other words that the kind of stranger-upon- stranger violence typically associated with urban life metastasizes to the rural, a phenomenon noted by Louis Wirth. In his book Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film , scholar Tony Williams notes the film's setting within a s-era home as representative of an "American tradition of violence that is random and without any coherent explanation. Bryan Bertino, on his inspiration for the film. Writer-director Bryan Bertino wrote the screenplay which was originally titled The Faces ; [9] it was the third screenplay he had ever written. According to production notes [9] and subsequent interviews, [10] the film was inspired by true events from Bertino's childhood: Bertino explains: [11]. As a kid, I lived in a house on a street in the middle of nowhere. One night, while our parents were out, somebody knocked on the front door and my little sister answered it. At the door were some people asking for somebody who didn't live there. We later found out that these people were knocking on doors in the area and, if no one was home, breaking into the houses. In interviews, Bertino stated he was "very impressed" with some of the theories circulating on the Internet about the "true events" the movie is allegedly based on, but said that his main inspiration was the true crime book Helter Skelter , which is about the Manson Family murders ; [12] some journalists speculated that the film was also inspired by the unsolved Keddie Cabin Murders of that occurred in a small vacation community in California's Sierra Nevada. Bertino entered the screenplay for The Strangers into a screenwriting contest, after which he sold its directorial rights to Universal Pictures. When casting the two leading actors in the film, Bertino sought Liv Tyler for the role of Kristen. Often in movies, it's all spelled out for you, and the dialogue is very explanatory. But Bryan doesn't write like that; he writes how normal people communicate—with questions lingering. I knew it would be interesting to act that. Speedman was also impressed by the script, stating that "the audience actually gets time to breathe with the characters before things get scary as hell. That got me interested from the first pages". In casting the three masked intruders, Bertino chose Australian fashion model Gemma Ward for the part of Dollface, feeling she had the exact "look" he had imagined; Ward was officially cast in the film in September Bertino had not initially planned on directing The Strangers , and had been disconnected from the project after selling directorial rights to Universal Pictures. Despite weather complications, the film was largely shot in chronological order. During production, it was reported that Liv Tyler came down with tonsillitis due to the extensive screaming the role required her to do. I had been told that she really wanted to be scared. She didn't want to have to fake it, and so it was my responsibility to really scare her. So we shot that scene, I ran at her, she started actually screaming, and then she kicked me away. The masks featured in the film were chosen by Bertino, who wanted them to appear as though the killers "could have picked them up at any store. A musical score, consisting of 19 pieces composed by score producer tomandandy , was released on May 27, , and was distributed by Lakeshore Records. The producers originally planned for a summer release in July , [27] which was eventually postponed to November ; however, this date was postponed as well. In late July , Bertino, Tyler and Speedman attended San Diego's annual Comic-Con event to promote the film; all three were present for a questions-and-answers panel session, as well as a screening of the film's official teaser trailer ; [30] this trailer was released on the internet several weeks later. It was not until March that a full-length trailer for the film was released, which can be found on Apple 's QuickTime trailer gallery.

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