Film reviews: Ben X | The Strangers

Published on Saturday 23 August 2008 10:20

BEN X (15) ***

Uncertain about social cues, a withdrawn autistic schoolboy (Greg Timmermans) observes people and tries to imitate them. According to doctors, "he is an extraordinary boy who fights to be ordinary". His teachers seem barely aware of his condition and students treat his studied, off-kilter responses as a source of amusement. But Ben leads a double life as classroom victim and online knight Ben X in a swords-and-sorcery fantasy world called ArchLord. In these pixilated lands, he's powerful and respected, and has a fantasy girlfriend (Laura Verlinden).

Writer/director Nic Balthazar creates vivid drama from what could have been a nagging humanist Grange Hill special by cutting from documentary-style interviews to flashbacks to open out the twin platforms of Ben's life. There are also ingenious strategies to get us inside his head, such as Ben being bombarded by light and noise when he walks into the real world, or only being able to focus on individual features like a nose and an ear, rather than take in the whole face of a person speaking to him. The result is a film that is sharp-edged, touching and compelling.

Glasgow Film Theatre from Friday, then Filmhouse, Edinburgh and DCA, September 26

THE STRANGERS (15)

**

Fans of the remorseless killer school of horror may well get a kick out of the brisk sadism of The Strangers, a harrowing real-time tale in which a romantic trip to a remote holiday home spirals into Liv Tyler, left, carrying a chopping knife and quivering.

Director Bryan Bertino aims for slightly arty, implicit threats rather than obvious outcomes when Kristen (Tyler) and James (Scott Speedman) return from a party and encounter knocks on the door, scratches on the wall and a mysteriously choked chimney. Their car is vandalised and, of course, the phone is dead.

These early scenes give a creepy panache to the home invasion by three motiveless masked killers. But when a lack of cigarettes and a morose skipping record by girly folkster Joanna Newsom understandably drive James outside to investigate further, the film's promising suspense is replaced by the usual clichd litany of shrieking chase sequences and dull grisliness, like a remedial Last House On The Left.

• On general release from Friday