SCARE BNB

THE STRANGERS: CHAPTER 1 Renny Harlin’s reboot of the home-invasion classic opens the door to vast terrors…

Deadly visitors: Pin-Up Girl and Scarecrow

Renny Harlin is explaining why home invasion is the scariest subgenre of horror. ‘It’s the ultimate fear,’ says the director of A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Exorcist: The Beginning. ‘It’s one thing to go to exotic countries or to a ghost house or to an underground lair – you expect bad things to happen. But your home is supposed to be safe. When that’s threatened…’ He looks distressed. ‘Especially when it seems aimless and senseless…’

Home-invasion movies go back to D.W. Griffith’s The Lonely Villa in 1909, but the poster child of the subgenre in its modern form is Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers (2008), in which a young couple are terrorised by three masked assailants. As an exercise in supremely crafted suspense, it’s a cousin to Carpenter’s Halloween. And while the belated second instalment, The Strangers: Prey at Night (2018), couldn’t compare, the thought of a franchise reboot is intriguing. Especially as this is the first chapter of an epic trilogy.

‘When [producer] Courtney Solomon sent the script to me, he said, “Do you remember The Strangers?”’ Harlin recalls. ‘I said, “It’s one of my all-time favourite horror films.” The script was 278 pages long! I’m like, “What’s going on?” And then I realised that it’s one giant story broken into three chapters, all set over a five-day period. I read the thing, and it was brilliant. It expands on that world and ends up answering some of the questions that we’ve all had for 15 years.’

‘What I love about the movie is that there’s nothing supernatural’

RENNY HARLIN

The expansion will come in the second and third chapters, with Harlin’s experience directing such huge action movies as Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger and The Long Kiss Goodnight sure to come in handy. For now, though, viewers can expect a contained tale set largely in one location, as a young couple (Froy Gutierrez, Madelaine Petsch) on a cross-country drive break down in a small Oregon town and hire an Airbnb for the night. Who’s that knocking at the door? Why, it’s Scarecrow, Dollface and Pin-Up Girl, of course, the iconic antagonists of the previous two movies.

‘I’ve stayed in Airbnbs, and always wondered: who else has the key; who else can come here?’ ponders Harlin. It’s a scary thought, but then what do you expect given his mum sat him down to Psycho when he was eight and Rosemary’s Baby when he was nine? ‘It was really fun to make the Airbnb a character in the movie. It’s like the walls are breathing, and every crack and sound is a potential threat. But it’s not a ghost house, by any means. What I love about the movie is that there’s nothing supernatural. It’s completely grounded in reality, and therefore incredibly frightening.’