The Stranger is currently available to stream on Hulu.
What should be a typical rideshare pickup in the Hollywood Hills goes tragically wrong in The Stranger, a mostly effective thriller that follows one horrific night in the life of a midwest transplant in Los Angeles who’s stalked by a creep who, for all intents and purposes, represents the element of hatred toward women in American society. Formerly a 13-episode series on the ill-fated Quibi streaming service, The Stranger has now found new life after being compiled into a tight 90-minute film that occasionally stumbles under its meta references to itself as a “story” (or even a film, at one point) but still shines thanks to the performances from its three leads.
From writer/director Veena Sud (The Killing, Seven Seconds), The Stranger’s script benefits from the transition to a feature-length movie. Its previous episodic format, which tracked this young woman’s 12-hour ordeal, would have had a momentum-breaking choppiness. As a film, that episodic quality ensures the blended-together story never sits too long in one place, keeping our protagonist moving throughout the night, trying different methods to outrun or outsmart a three-steps-ahead madman who is so omnipresent that it suggests the world – or even the film – itself is stalking her rather than an actual person.
There are elements to this particular slant that work really well, but when the villain – one “Carl E,” a hacker extraordinaire who, almost with clairvoyant ability, can predict everything his victim is going to do – opens his mouth, things become too on-the-nose and what should be subtext pushes out to the front and center in a frustrating manner. Because of this, The Stranger loses a step as a bare bones, taut thriller. It’s infused with clunky moments that rip us out of the immediate moment.
There are elements to this particular slant that work really well, but when the villain – one “Carl E,” a hacker extraordinaire who, almost with clairvoyant ability, can predict everything his victim is going to do – opens his mouth, things become too on-the-nose and what should be subtext pushes out to the front and center in a frustrating manner. Because of this, The Stranger loses a step as a bare bones, taut thriller. It’s infused with clunky moments that rip us out of the immediate moment.
Most of the time, though, The Stranger is slick, impeccably performed, and moves like a rocket at some points. Largely, it works because of star Maika Monroe (known to thriller/horror fans from It Follows and The Guest) and her natural ability to shine as a besieged, stalked “final girl.”
There are elements present here that, even though it was filmed in 2020, parallel 2023’s Watcher, in which Monroe played a woman living in Bucharest who was convinced her neighbor was watching and stalking her. In The Stranger – which is presumably a purposefully vague title given the bad guy’s ubiquitous nature as a seething misogynist – Monroe plays new-to-LA Clare, a woman with a complicated past as an accuser who runs into just about every obstacle under the sun that a woman is in danger of facing on a daily basis: gaslighting, invasion of privacy, hate from random men, being denied protection, overt threats of violence, and two-faced “nice guys.” It’s a thriller that leans into horror at certain points while also drawing, very pointedly, from real life. Monroe captivates as Clare journeys through a landscape of terror until she comes to the realization she’s more powerful than she thought.
Making Clare’s life a raging sea is a random, out-of-the-blue dickweed, played by Dane DeHaan (Chronicle, Oppenheimer), who is appropriately ferocious as a psycho meant to embody swaths of anonymous internet goons. DeHaan is also great here as a cocky, galaxy-brained monster who loves to manipulate, monologue, and perform. His dialogue, though – particularly entering the third act when the larger motivations for his serial “experiments” are revealed – ranges from annoyingly unsubtle to irritatingly ill-fitting for this story. This is also around the time when his machinations and ability to predict the future begin to resemble a superhuman killer like Jigsaw, though Carl’s ability to anticipate Clare is a stretch throughout the movie, ranging from planting a gun in the exact right place to knowing precisely when she’ll try to turn the tables on him.
Avan Jogia (Victorious) is also on board here as a convenience store clerk who gets caught up in Clare’s turmoil. Jogia is a huge boon for the story since he encompasses the roles of an ally, a potential romantic interest, and someone who can also explain certain tech-related plot points. Sud is smart enough to know that even though this is Clare’s story, she needs someone else to believe her before the end. And The Stranger is also merciful enough to not be the Whole World vs. Clare for the entirety of the tale, making it a small, but notable victory for both modest thrillers and creator-owned endeavors.
