The Last Winter and The Strangers

(this was from November of last year, from another blog)

I watched "The Last Winter" and "The Strangers" over the weekend, part of my usual Halloween frightfesting. Although the former was well-reviewed, I felt there were some big-time problems with the actual writing of the story; it could've benefited from a few more revisions of the screenplay, I think. My sense was that the writers were happy to indulge Ron Perlman in it, and as such, his character got away with a lot more than he should have, to the detriment of the overall narrative. Also, the "hero" in the story would've been better off as an early victim, as he doesn't quite do his part in the story. Further, the story arcs a certain way that doesn't do half the cast justice in it. There were some good eerie moments in it, but overall, I think the work didn't fully use all of its resources.

I was much more impressed with (and scared by) "The Strangers" -- which was a far simpler story than "The Last Winter," but while it might've been only four cylinders, it was running smoothly on all four of them, and made excellent use of terror and dread in the story to build into a real nightmare of a story. The primary weaknesses were the "true story" lead-in to it -- that wasn't necessary, was distracting (esp. since the "true story" basically alludes to the Manson family murders, as well as a creepy personal experience of the director).



It filled me with dread, made me so grateful I no longer owned a home in the country, for sure. I'm used to dealing with city weirdness, but it's a different brand of weirdness to country creepiness.