The Strangers claims to be based on a true story, a disputable fact that is ultimately irrelevant. (So irrelevant I have not bothered to expend the thirty seconds on Google necessary to verify.) If it’s true, it’s precisely true enough to 1) have some “this could happen to you” resonance, and 2) not true enough to require paying anyone for the rights to the story. “Cheap” is how modern mainstream horror movies roll, and so long as you’re going for that 1970’s feel—which The Strangers most assuredly does—“cheap” verisimilitude is just fine. Part of the fun, even.

The setup: previously happy couple James (Scott Speedman) and Kristen (Liv Tyler) spend the night at James’ family’s secluded summer cabin after a friend’s wedding. Three masked psychopaths—one man, two women, not a half-dozen lines of dialogue between them—stage an elaborate all-night home invasion with the intent to kill, but not before they wring a lot of fear out of James and Kristen first. The production is so spare and focused that the cast numbers eight people in total, and only three have proper names. Save one flashback, everything is filmed in or around this cabin. This economy in a story, like a play, leaves no room for a writer-director (in this case, the previously credit-free Bryan Bertino) to hide his weaknesses. It makes him or breaks him.

Or just halfway bends him. James’ cabin is one of those great horror movie conventions, possessing all the required everyday objects that turn menacing when the lights are flickering or some guy in a mask is messing with them: a record player with scratchy old records, a piano, a fireplace, a rusted-out swing set, a barn-cum-tool shed with ham radio, a front door with no peephole… not to mention a whole lot of big windows. The cabin also has a hunting shotgun, which is useful, and a big kitchen knife, which turns out to be less so. Cell phones—the sole concession to the modern age—are dutifully removed from field of play early on, as they so often are in these movies. Can’t have that terrified feeling of isolation if you can call anyone you want at any time from anywhere.

And I found that, weirdly, building up to the first manifestations of the home invasion I actually was afraid—for the couple or for me, I don’t know. A very distinct “oh, shit, I can’t do this” sat at the pit of my stomach, building until the actual point of (more or less) release. Then I was OK. Effective tension build or a sign of my advancing age and frayed nerves? I leave that up to you.

Once the actual invasion begins, the tone shifts from Texas Chainsaw Massacre to another 70s luminary, Halloween. (You probably guessed that after seeing the previews.) The three invaders (“Man in the Mask,” “Dollface,” and “Pin-Up Girl,” named after their creepy Halloween masks) possess those traits best displayed by Michael Myers: they move in silence (except when they don’t), they always seem to know where to be, and you never see them actually enter or exit rooms. They simply manifest their presence, or threaten by not being present; because who knows where they might be if you can’t see them?

This sort of villain tactic has its bonuses, but we’re also familiar with their indulgences. To my despair, so is Bertino. The Strangers pulls the “they’re there, then you look away, and then you look back, and they’re gone!” trick at least six times, which is five times too many. Jump-scares and a jangling soundtrack are too heavy, too; the opening scares in The Strangers would have been much stronger without the soundtrack telling us how to feel before we’re allowed to feel it for ourselves. Were Bertino an older and more experienced horror filmmaker, I’d be inclined to believe he didn’t trust the material to do the work on its own.

The problem may be systemic to this kind of horror, however. We’re meant to sink into the lives of these people and, thus, make some sense out of their apparently nonsensical actions—because they, in their heart of hearts, do not know what is coming and, like all of us in our everyday lives, are completely oblivious to true danger until it’s right on top of us. We don’t expect bad things to happen to us in familiar places, and neither do the characters. The problem is that we know they are in mortal danger from the beginning, because that’s why they’re at the movie. We are aware they are in a horror movie, and they are not. The Strangers even tells us what will happen to the couple right up front. We are aware of what happens to them, and they are not. Were this a different kind of horror movie, there might be some great tension there; instead, we’re left waiting for the first scare and then we wonder why it takes the characters so long to get with the program.

There are a few things Bertino does right. His characters are more or less believable and don’t commit an egregious number of stupidity sins. We are effectively disoriented when the characters are the same. Shades drawn on windows go from comfort to menace—if they can’t see us, that means we can’t see outside, either, and who knows what they’re up to? And we are made acutely aware that, no matter where you look, there’s always somewhere you aren’t.

But it’s not enough, even with those brief stabs at something better. The Strangers is happy to be what it is, an exercise in home-invasion horror with deliberate ciphers for villains and a whole lotta screaming. The audience I saw it with—the usual horror film screening crowd of laughing teenagers and retired folks who like free stuff regardless of what it is—was not impressed, though I imagine the whole thing would work a little better for an adult crowd that knows how to shut up. But not by much. The Strangers is simply more of the same, with few ambitions to be anything more.