One of the movie channels is showing a smorgasbord of disaster movies tonight:

Twister

Volcano

Dante's Peak

The only way it could get better is if they topped it off with Day After Tomorrow.

What is it that I love so much about magma explosions, tidal waves, capsizing boats, animal stampedes, and people hopelessly trapped in submarines? I dunno. But something about total, violent destruction makes me positively cheery.

Needless to say, I'll be staying in tonight, and not just because I have a nasty cold. No, I'll be staying in to cheer on the lava.

Warning: spoilers ahead.

I'm a horror movie nerd.  I will see any scary schlock that the studios churn out, and if it has zombies, I will see it twice.  So I went to see The Strangers on the grounds that it looked like a cross between Vacancy and Panic Room and couldn't be all that bad.  Ohhh, was I wrong.

There are only two things that this movie gets right.  One, there's a clever moment near the end where the victims see the faces behind the killers' masks but the audience doesn't.  That was a smart, interesting decision that at least provokes some discussion after the whole thing is over.  Two, there are a couple of well-managed startle scenes where the movie managed to make most of the audience (me included) squeak with surprise and fear. 

But see, when I put it like that, it almost sounds -- for a horror movie -- good.   And it was so not.

A short list of movies I would rather see several times instead of ever seeing Strangers again:

• Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo
• Eyes Wide Shut
• Showgirls
• Hollow Man
• Beowulf (the animated version)
• all three of the Star Wars prequels
• Exorcist III
• Highlander II

And these are all movies I hated so much I still wish I could go back in time and potentially destroy the world through a time paradox by talking myself out of seeing them in the first place.

So, why is Strangers so bad?  Let me count the ways.  First, there's a female protagonist so appallingly stupid, I found myself rooting for her to be killed.  Who sits on the back porch while the boyfriend goes off into the woods with the only gun?  (And who, for that matter, lets the boyfriend go off into the woods with the only gun?)  Who runs away from the killers in the woods without putting shoes on first, only to sprain an ankle in a well-lit, highly visible, shallow lawn divot?  Who spends the first thirty minutes fully cognizant someone is trying to break into the house but neglects to call the police?  Who -- knowing the killers have found their way inside -- re-enters the fucking house?

The boyfriend?  Not much better.  Does anyone actually pooh-pooh their girlfriend when she says that someone's broken into the house, cut the phone lines, and destroyed her cell phone? 

In short, who are these people, and why am I supposed to feel sorry for them? 

I have to say, this is the first horror movie I've ever watched where the protagonists were so stupid I couldn't even begin to suspend disbelief, which says something, considering the number of "let's split up in the dark woods and search for the cyborg vampire zombies with night vision" B movies I've enjoyed in my time.

But on top of that, Strangers abused the audience's patience.  I've happily watched some of the grossest splatter films, but the slow-motion, lovingly depicted stabbings that end this movie were both nauseating and boring, which shouldn't be possible.  I was grossed out and annoyed the movie wasn't over.  You'd think I would be pleased to see the protagonists murdered, no?  But in fact, even though I'd checked out well before the halfway point in the movie, I was upset by the ending.  Not upset in a "wow, the true sadness of death has been brought home to me, give this one an Oscar!" way -- more in a "now I know what it would feel like to watch a snuff film" way.  I've always defended horror movies' right to show ridiculous, gratuitous violence, but this was neither the guilt-free violence of a splatter film nor the oh-the-humanity violence of a serious film trying to make a point.   It just made me feel implicated in someone else's gross obsession.

And while I'm on the subject, how the fuck did this movie get an R rating?  Things that will get you an NC-17 rating include male nudity in a sexual context, depictions of a woman receiving oral sex (blowjobs are okay -- so is fucking an apple pie) -- anything, really, that isn't a standard and sexist depiction of hetero sex where the woman is more naked than the man.  But  an interminable, wretched stabbing scene showing people dying a wretched, painful death in a failed bid to make a light, lame horror movie seem serious and, like, deep and shit?  MPAA is all, "no prob." 

So, anyway?  Just one more thing: I really never thought I would see a movie I hated more than that fucking 3-D animated version of Beowulf.