The Stranger (2014)

I never write reviews but this time I had to! The story itself is not bad at all, but the acting is. Only Cristobal Tapia Montt as Martin is saved here. Also, the lines in some cases are really off! The dialogues sometimes really don't deliver. Production company IFC Midnight normally produces good or decent horror movies, but this time is sadly not the case. If you are a horror fan and you have a lot of time, then watch it.

While this film has an interesting premise and could have been a really good story, the execution is just so dull, slow and overly- dramatic that it really does suck all the joy and entertainment value out of it. What's more it takes ages to show the audience what most people will have guessed in the first five minutes. With all the grandstanding and wasted time taken away this really could have just been a solid short rather than a feature film.Overall it is hard to recommend The Stranger since it doesn't really provide enough entertainment or originality to justify its existence. Only watch if you for some reason enjoy really slow, not- horrorific in any way, horrors that have only the smallest amount of substance to justify their overly-serious tone.

The log-line for the movie is very simple, a mysterious man shows up at a home in a small Canadian town. Thing promptly go sideways for not only the Stranger but also for just about everyone he encounters, plunging the town into a bloodbath.The trailer for the movie gave me the impression it was some sort of early outbreak style horror film. The type of movie that tells how patient zero started the end of the world. It certainly could have gone in the direction I suppose but the film turns out to be much smaller in scope than expected, taking a different approach to an old horror trope. Who the Stranger searching for and why he needs to find them are clues that filmmaker Amoedo provides sparingly. The back story is filled in through flashbacks designed to provide the audience with motivation for the Stranger's actions.The film is engaging to a degree but it's got serious flaws. The mystery is enough to keep you in it to the end and the gore and violence are well handled, if not brutal. The acting is extremely uneven but isn't bad enough to drag the movie down. Where the movie falls short for me is in how Amoedo handles the characters. There isn't really a likable character in the entire film. The old rule of storytelling is give the reader/viewer/listener one character they can root for. Amoedo gives us that…sort of. To start, everyone is damaged. All are worn out or on drugs or lost. The hero(es) are just terrible at standing up for themselves. None of them make good decisions. They're all inconsistent, or weak or just give into terrible situations without pushing back, taking a stand or trying to get help from someone outside of town. This becomes frustrating quickly because the villains are evil… and when I say evil I mean really evil.They kill, maim, beat, torture, cover-up, intimidate, circumvent, and subdue anyone or anything that appear as a threat to them. They do all this without any compunction or real fear of being detected. The impunity with which the antagonists operate comes across as a bit implausible given the setting of the movie. Corrupt police are easier to swallow in bigger cities, but in a small (nice looking) Canadian town it's harder to accept based on the scope of the nefarious activities our antagonists are engaging in. This has a significant impact on the film's climax. When the final act begins the terrible transition that should push our Big Bad to another level of menace falls flat because we've already seen him be so damned evil it doesn't matter he's now an evil monster.The Stranger falls squarely in the middle of the spectrum. It's worth seeing once and I enjoyed the unique approach to an old idea, but the execution was sloppy, leaving me less than thrilled when the movie finally came to it's conclusion.Perhaps my review would best be summed up with one word… Meh.

"Eli Roth presents…" and "from the writer of The Green Inferno" is what the poster of this film loudly and proudly proclaims… Writer/director Guillermo Amoede could perhaps benefit from his professional and personal link with Eli Roth for publicity and marketing reasons, but his very own long-feature "The Stranger" is definitely a lot more ambitious, fascinating and convoluted than anything that Eli Roth ever delivered himself! With "The Stranger", Guillermo Amoede single-handedly attempts to reanimate the sub- genre of vampire movies, complete with imaginative new ideas, profound character drawings and a thoroughly dark and harrowing atmosphere. The film perhaps didn't turn out to be a genuine masterpiece, but it's definitely a more than respectable attempt and one of the most unique and compelling horror efforts that I've seen during the past couple of years. "The Stranger" is also a very demanding film, with a tone that is continuously dead serious, sub plots and background stories that are all depressing and characters that are all melancholic. This surely isn't the type of movie that'll make you merry, especially because it also features a few very painful and 'unfair' death sequences, but it's guaranteed to leave some kind of lasting impression. Late one night in a remote little town, the 17-year- old graffiti vandal Peter receives a visit from a bearded stranger. He asks where he can find a certain Anna, but Anna has been dead and buried since many years. That same night, the stranger is attacked and killed by the local hoodlum Caleb and two of his friends. Peter witnesses the attack and alerts a patrolling police officer, but police officer De Luca is Caleb's dad and helps his son with hiding the body. But then the stranger miraculously turns out to be still alive and he aggressively refuses medical help from Peter and his nurse mother. Meanwhile Officer De Luca and Caleb found out that the body disappeared, so now they head out to kill both the stranger and Peter. This couple of sentences only covers a very small part of the convoluted plot. In fact, I already revealed a fairly major plot twist by stating that "The Stranger" is a vampire movie, since this only becomes apparent after a while. There is a lot more detailed subject matter related to the stranger's search for Anna, the link with Peter and the relationship between Officer De Luca and his troubled son. The scenario isn't always convincing or realistic. For example, I find it rather implausible that a corrupt police officer can sabotage a serious case so intensely and for so long without his colleagues interfering. The pacing is also quite slow, which might put off several viewers, but the slow pace definitely suits the sober ambiance and dark undertones. "The Stranger" also contains a bit of explicit violence and nasty make-up effects, so I won't immediately recommend it to squeamish people. However, if you have the stomach for it, and you're looking for a brutal thriller with a good plot, don't hesitate to check out "The Stranger".