#THE STRANGERS PREY AT NIGHT TRUE STORY SKIN#
#THE STRANGERS PREY AT NIGHT TRUE STORY SERIES#
#THE STRANGERS PREY AT NIGHT TRUE STORY TV#

#THE STRANGERS PREY AT NIGHT TRUE STORY TV#

The eldest daughter, Sheila, was spending the night with a friend nearby, while the younger daughter, Tina, came home from watching TV with a neighboring friend sometime that evening. Sue's oldest boy, Johnny, came home later in the evening with his friend Dana. On the evening of the murders, Sue was home with her two youngest boys, Greg and Rick, who had their friend Justin over for the night. Sue Sharp and her five kids had rented cabin 28 at the Keddie resort, where they had stayed since the previous November after Sue left her abusive husband. The murders took place on the evening of April 11 or the early morning of Apin Keddie, a small, defunct railroad town in Plumas County, California. Unsolved murders are fairly common, but the sheer brutality of the case makes this one particularly unsettling, even more so when you fall down the internet rabbit hole of police and investigative reports, crime scene photos, and rumors of potential culprits.Įvery couple of years I revisit the Keddie Cabin story to see if there have been any new developments, and each time I find myself just as compelled and unsettled by the intensely disturbing case. Known as the Keddie Cabin Murders, this horrific quadruple homicide took place in California in 1981 and remains unsolved to this day. Bertino also cites the obvious reference: the Manson Family murders.īut there's one lesser-known case that inspired The Strangers, and it's far more terrifying than Bertino's film.

#THE STRANGERS PREY AT NIGHT TRUE STORY SERIES#

He later found out that these people were responsible for a series of break-ins and robberies. The filmmaker has cited a childhood experience where strangers knocked on his door while his parents were away, asking for someone who didn't live there. Perhaps more disquieting than The Strangers is that Bertino's film was inspired by a few real-life events. Bertino understands and embraces something that most successful slashers (particularly as they become full-fledged franchises) don't: the less we know about the boogeymen, the scarier they remain.Īnd really, what is more terrifying than the notion of a killer or killers pursuing you with no rationality, no purpose, no clear-cut motivation? What's scarier than being pursued by faceless antagonists who have carefully planned their attack, turning your own comfort against you and transforming your home into an inescapable nightmare? The killers are insidiously cunning, undermining the notion of a safe, familiar space as Bertino seizes on the invasive notion of home invasion. What makes The Strangers so effective is the cold, uncaring facelessness of the killers and the absence of motivation.

#THE STRANGERS PREY AT NIGHT TRUE STORY SKIN#

As our own Brian Collins has written before, Bryan Bertino's The Strangers is a perhaps underrated slasher masterpiece, and one of the absolute scariest contemporary horror films – that's an impressive and increasingly rare feat, but one that Bertino pulls off in effortlessly savage fashion.įor the unfamiliar: The Strangers centers on a couple relentlessly and eerily stalked by a trio of masked killers with no apparent motivation, resulting in an impeccably suspenseful home invasion thriller that crawls under your skin with the precision of the shiniest, sharpest knife.

The strangers prey at night true story