Conner McAleese
Mothers are famed within horror cinema. From Norma Bates and Mrs. Voorhees to Wendy Torrance and Margaret White, mothers dominate the cultural conversation around family in horror. They are the puppet masters behind the scenes and the legacies left to their children; they abuse, love, and sometimes kill, in equal measure across horror’s canon. This dominant position of the ‘mother’ within the first families of horror is often a reflection of her cultural capital at the time the film was made.
Families have been framed in vastly different terms in both literature and media since the women’s liberation movements and adjoining civil rights movements of the 1960’s, “with an emphasis on dysfunctionality within the American nuclear family.” With that change has come new paradigms through which to view the role and responsibilities of motherhood (Arnold 46). This dysfunction has mutated with the coming of the neo-slasher and its destabilisation of traditional gender roles. The roles of ‘mother’, ‘father’, and of the family unit has developed in some, though not all sections of society to become less conservative, with a greater value placed on women’s emancipation from their duties as a mother.
Here, I will argue that The Strangers (Bryan Bertino 2008) reflects horror’s involvement in this debate, drawing primarily from the work of two scholars, Philip Simpson and Kimberly Jackson. First, the relationship between Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler) and James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) will be examined to show how it embodies an anti-conservative view of the family—and how this serves as the principal factor in their lack of resilience against the trio of strangers that descends upon them. Kristen and James’s relationship will then be contrasted with that of the invading trio in order to illustrate horror’s proclivity for assembling a de facto nuclear family around its villains, and how The Strangers’ trio represents contemporary culture’s interpretation of family and family dynamics at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Kristen and James: ‘Failings’ within modern family
Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler)
“The couple will end up doused in blood rather than confetti”
(Jackson 49)
From the outset of the film, Kristen and James’s relationship is in a state of upheaval. Kirsten’s rejection of James’s marriage proposal has left the future of their relationship in doubt. Upon leaving a wedding together (where James proposed), the couple retreat to James’s family vacation home outside of the city. The house is strewn with rose petals, bottles of champagne are in the bathroom and living room, making evident James’s certainty that Kristen would agree to the proposal. Kristen’s rejection immediately takes on cultural significance: “the failure of their romantic relationship to evolve into legal domesticity, and the failure of each protagonist to fulfil patriarchal gender roles, all seem to be an omen of the attack they endure” (Simpson 183). What Simpson identifies here is both Kristen’s deviation from her prescribed role as wife and James’s emasculation through his response to his “embarrassment” (as quoted from the film).
While much has been made of James’s actions following the return to the vacation home (eating ice cream and not being able to load or fire a gun apparently reads as feminine), it is Kristen’s role as the ‘deviant’ from societal norms that drives the film. The first, perhaps opaque, reason for this is drawn from one of the last lines of the dialogue heard on screen. “Because you were home…” is the sole reason given by the invaders for the night of bloody attacks and psychological torture against Kristen and James. It is arguable that, had the proposal been accepted, the night would have ended much quicker (sans argument), and the lights that drew the trio to the Hoyt vacation home would have been turned off.
Through this analysis, James and Kristen are victims of their own division—and the narrative of the film appears to support this. “The Strangers suggests that men and women remain trapped on the tenterhooks of patriarchal oppression” (Jackson 24). The “patriarchal oppression” Jackson describes here is one of strict cultural edicts about behaviour and role. Kristen’s transgression is an independent assertion of choice, as she appears to have no disillusionment with marriage itself. Several flashbacks show her enjoying the wedding she and James were attending, and she engages within the institution more broadly as she was a member of the wedding party. Nor is her decision based on a rejection of James and their relationship. Kristen says, “I’m so sorry it wasn’t the way you thought it would be…I’m just not ready yet.” With this line, Kristen positions herself in a contemporary space inaccessible to many women in the 70’s and 80’s. Her independence, however, will soon be punished.
While at first glance, none of these reasons appear to be ‘failings’ as such, when they are juxtaposed with the familial dynamic between the titular strangers, the film may be viewed as a critique of this space of independence and an affirmation of conformity to legalised love.
Masking the Nuclear Family: Man in Mask, Pin-Up Girl, and Dollface
Where James and Kristen are fractured, The Strangers trio is unified. Scholars have developed theories about how this family came to be transient killers, with the most common association coming from Bryan Bertino himself in discussing how the Manson family served partly as inspiration for the film. Although their true relationship is unknown, I’d like to make a case that they are not a Manson-type family but a mother, father, and daughter and thus a literal incarnation of a modern nuclear family. To begin, the Manson family construct revolved around a charismatic central figure – Charles Manson. At no point in the film does any one of the killers emerge as such a central figure. In fact, the film actively disperses the family to work in concert with one another to begin the psychological torture of Kristen. When Man in Mask is first shown on screen, Dollface begins to bang on the front door causing Kristen to retreat quickly to one the back bedrooms. Also, throughout the film (until its climax), only two killers are ever shown on screen at the same time, and the film routinely cycles through all three without allowing one to dominate. Arguably, the narcissism of a Charles Manson figure would negate such collusion between three like-minded killers working in tandem throughout an entire evening to enact what appears to be a thought-out plan.
Pin-Up Girl (Laura Margolis) and Dollface (Gemma Ward)
Secondly, one of the final lines in the film is, “It’ll be easier next time.” This is uttered by Pin-Up Girl (mother) to Dollface (daughter) and is preceded by no vocalisation that Dollface found the ordeal difficult. This presupposes that Pin-Up Girl understands Dollface and can ascertain her discomfort and offer assurance. “Next time” implies that this is one of the first killings partaken as a family unit and that more will come. This casts the film in a different light as the focus given to Dollface (having the most lines, showing on screen first, being the first killer to stab Kristen, etc) now seems to reflect more of a nurturing nature than the Man in Mask and Pin-Up Girl.
If we accept this argument, we can begin to infer a cultural narrative of the nuclear family as being somewhat backward. Kristen and James are depicted as urban, wealthy, modern inhabitants of the beginning of the “woke” movements that were emerging in the late 2000’s. By contrast, the trio seem to be of a transient nature (as shown in the opening scenes), of more modest means (via their clothing and truck), and more conservative in their image of what being in a family means.
Man in Mask is literally a man in a potato sack mask, Pin-Up Girl is lacquered in rouge with pale skin reminiscent of old Hollywood glamour, while Dollface is in a porcelain mask that highlights the more rounded cheeks and eyes of youth. Much time can be spent on dissecting these masks, but each of them represents traditional ideals of the All-American family in which a beautiful blonde daughter is raised by an equally beautiful mother and a hard-working father. This line of thought is in direct contradiction to Kendall Phillips who states that: “In these films, the plot is driven by the encounter between the good, civilised, and rational family and its paired opposite: the nocturnal family of evil savagery and madness” (quoted in Jackson 53).
It is primarily the word “rational” that decentres Phillip’s statement. Nothing about Kristen and James’s response to the attack appears rational or grounded in any sense of forethought at all. At no point in the film is this more evident than when James takes it upon himself to go out to the barn and try and contact help on the CB radio (the pesky cell phones were disposed of quickly in the first act of the film). Kristen begs to go with him, and he brushes her off with a simple “I’ll be fine.” While I have dissected here the ways in which Kristen and James represent a distinctly modern interpretation of the male/female relationship, this decision highlights the persistent patriarchal challenges to such a relationship. James’s male ego sees only his partner’s feminine concern for his well-being, and completely disregards Kristen’s own concerns—the chief of which is the fear of remaining alone in a house infested both with masked killers and with the body of James’s dead best friend (played by Glenn Howerton).
James Hoyt (Scott Speedman), Man in Mask (Kip Weeks) and Pin-Up Girl
Contrast this with the unity shown in the next scene between Pin-Up Girl and Man in Mask. While James heads towards the barn, Pin-Up Girl emerges and is, for a moment, vulnerable to James’s family shotgun. As James raises the gun, Pin-Up Girl does not run (as self-preservation would dictate) but instead stands her ground and flashes her torch into his eyes. At first, this seems to be in order to stop him aiming the gun, but instead we see the cohesion between the ‘mother’ and ‘father’ of the killer family as this allows for a delay long enough that Man in Mask can flank James’s position and capture him while leaving Pin-Up Girl unharmed.
“From a family meek and mild…”
(Merle Haggard, ‘Mama Tried’)
Horror has been accused of engendering conservative social codes through its narratives—scaring teens and adults alike into towing the cultural line and acting in a virginal, sober, constrained way to defend oneself against the horrors of the world. “The Strangers has the genre air of 1970’s horror,” Simpson writes, and thus continues its conservative agenda (183). On one hand we have Kristen and James, a modern couple who have rejected legalising their relationship and acted in non-gender conforming ways. On the other hand, we have a traditionally-structured, yet feminine-focused nuclear family punishing them for doing so. At the heart of each family is Kristen and Pin-Up Girl, the respective ‘mother’ figures of their group. Each is partially empowered, yet neither are outside the patriarchal structure that frames them. At its core, “romance and marriage are…linked with violence” (Jackson 49). Pin-Up Girl is violently attacking Kristen’s transgression against motherhood and marriage, while positioning her own role within her own family as lying between the conservative ideals and modern realities of marriage. While at odds, both women represent a cultural evolution from the 70’s and 80’s horror mothers mentioned in the introduction. Their nuance, their freedom to make decisions, and their independence throughout the film seem, at first glance, to be a step forward for women in horror film.
However, one song lingers like the echo of Kristen’s final scream and undermines the narrative of family altogether. As the film rises to a crescendo, a song plays on the couple’s record player about the futility of a mother’s love. The song is brief, but it’s indicative of modern interpretations of family within horror. As we have moved as a society from an orientation toward family to individualistic narratives of self-fulfilment, the role of the mother (and father) may be limited even further as the structure of familial responsibility decomposes. As Merle Haggard sings, “Mama tried to raise me better/ but her pleading I denied/ That leaves only me to blame ‘cause Mama tried.”
Works Cited
Arnold, Sarah. Maternal Horror Film Melodrama and Motherhood. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Jackson, Kimberly. Gender and the Nuclear Family in Twenty-First-Century Horror. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Merle Haggard and The Strangers. “Mama Tried.” Mama Tried, Capitol, 1968.
Simpson, Philip. L. “‘There’s Blood on the Walls’: Serial Killing as Post-9/11 Terror in The Strangers.” Murders and Acquisitions: Representations of the Serial Killer in Popular Culture, edited by Alzena MacDonald, Bloomsbury, 2013, pp. 181-202.
