Anyway, a couple and their son head out for a stay at their vacation house by the lake. As they arrive they briefly converse with their neighbor who is with a couple of young men out in the yard. The neighbor seems a little strange…a little standoffish. The neighbor comes over later with one of the young men and introduces him to the family. Later the second young man comes over under the guise of being sent over by the neighbor’s wife to borrow some eggs. Then pretty much all Hell breaks loose as the family is held against their will and terrorized.

The two young men who are terrorizing the couple are real smart-asses and extremely obnoxious. In addressing one another they refer to themselves as Tom & Jerry, or Bevis & Butthead, or Tubbs, which one of whom is offended by. They’re matter-of-factly and condescending in how they address the family and are also extremely vicious. Prime examples of how sociopaths would interact with people. In an example of this, Naomi Watts asks at a mid-point in the film “Why don’t you just kill us” to which the reply went something like “Don’t underestimate the value of entertainment.”

Gimp wise Naomi Watts is forced to strip (although you don't see anything…damn it Jim!) in a scene, to prove a point (and humiliate) by one of the sociopaths. She is allowed to put her bra and panties back on, then has her hands duct taped behind her back. Her ankles are then duct taped on screen as one of the intruders wraps the tape around her ankles about a dozen times.

Later there are two more scenes with Naomi bound. The first is after she had escaped and is re-captured, she has her wrists bound in front of her with rope and has her mouth stuffed and rope gagged. This is a better than most mainstream hands-tied-in-front scenes (I hate those BTW), as her hands are roped to where she cannot raise them enough to remove her gag (I hate when mainstreams has the hands tied in front but they never even attempt to remove their gags).

The finale segment has her tape gagged (wrapped all the way around) and bound in a boat.

Entertainment value: I saw the trailers on TV some time ago, looking to be tongue-in-cheek, or light-hearted. Boy was I wrong in expecting that as the trailer I saw was very misleading. This film was a very violent and vicious movie. This is a movie that either you love it or you end up hating it, it seems. Put me in the group that loved it…most of it anyway. I was thoroughly into the picture until a scene in the last 15 minute of the movie that almost ruined it for me. Up until then the movie is based in real world scenarios. Then there is an insertion of an almost cartoon-like, for lack of a better term, scene. I suppose it could be interpreted as imagined. But even if that were the case, the outcome of the segment benefits neither the intruders nor the victims, so I can see that either party would imagine this. IMO, they should have left well enough alone and left the segment out.

The movie also reminded me of The Strangers (w/Liv Tyler) in the sense that the 3 kids that terrorized the couple in that movie did it pretty much for kicks. Same thing here, except that in The Strangers, things were done at a distance so to speak, here it’s all in the family’s face, up close and personal. Reminded me of The Strangers, but this is a much better movie IMO. Despite the one part towards the end, I give it a B