Stranger

You are about to go on a wild ride.

A ride consisting of some of the most wooden acting you will ever witness.

A ride that will reveal one of the worst directors of all time.

A ride with a script so bad, it had to be written spontaneously by a monkey with a typewriter.

This movie is about nothing. It's yet another vapid blended couple in a cabin who do what people in a cabin do. They drink. They smoke weed (although the woman has no clue how to toke) they discus the number of eggs to cook. And they do it for an hour and 18 minutes.

There are also ancillary characters who have nothing to do with forwarding the plot.

And then there's the protagonist. The movie's almost done by the time he's inttroduced.

How did this movie get made?

I'm giving this one star despite the decent production values because the rest is just that bad. You'll spend most of the movie watching two bad actors work through fascinating dialogue like, "One egg or two." If that's not thrilling enough, the actress does quite a lot of posing, occasionally on yoga mats, and occasionally in front of mirrors. Occasionally, a creepy person will turn up, giving the actress an opportunity to cry. Then it will all end without any explanation whatsoever. It's like watching paint dry, only more irritating. A C movie would probably be more entertaining, so don't bother.

This script is so bad I just wonder how anyone put 1 dollar behind it. I mean, the dialogue is literally like watching 2 boring people hang out for an hour. Just literally doing nothing. The guest characters literally bring zero value. The actors had no chance.

If I'm a young actor I would have passed on this. Scripts that all take place between 2 people are hard enough, but when the dialogue is about making drinks, how many eggs do you want, I'm going to make some pasta, let's watch a movie, when are we getting married......

That's literally the entire first hour of the movie. Why? Why does this movie exist? It won't make any money and if it did you've scammed someone. Can't believe I sat though it. Unreal. I gave it 2 stars because the female actor is hot. That's the only thing good about this "movie".

The funny thing about this flick is what caused me to totally give up on it. Was it the wooden acting? No. How about the terrible sound design/soundtrack? Nope. Or the casting where they made an obvious fail in using a dude about the same age as the lead actor as "the creepy old guy."

No, it was the ridiculously amateur, intelligence insulting background radio dialog/announcing during two separate car trips. On the way to the store and back for some pasta that they forgot (3 boxes???), the radio in the SUV plays in the background and provides what seems like expository information. But it was so friggin amateur! The announcer is talking about a trail that the community had voted to fund re-opening after a girl had fallen down while jogging. The mayor is mentioned, but not his or her name like you'd hear on any local radio station. No. Just "the mayor" says this...the "opposition leader" says that...Then they get to the weather. When reading the weekly forecast do they use the standard "The high temp will be 72 and the low temp will be 65"? No, they say "The maximum will be 72 and the minimum will be 65 as we watch the skies for you in this already hot summer..." NOBODY reads a weather forecast like that in the United States. It's THE HIGH WILL BE or THE LOW WILL BE.

But seriously that really isn't the only reason this movie is terrible, of course. All of those things I mentioned in my opening paragraph are true. The acting is wooden, the casting is a fail, the sound design is garbage, the cinematography is puzzlingly disjointed and in many places not even relevant to what's happening in the story (of which there is not much of one).

Take note of the overhead drone footage of the forest as they drive into the mountains headed to the cabin. Hmmm....where have we seen this before? Ominous music playing as we see the tops of pine trees (going in multiple directions?!) and an aerial view of a car with a couple inside. All that was missing was Danny and his imaginary friend. Just a terrible job of trying to ape Kubrick for absolutely no reason. Then there are the lingering camera shots when the character has left the frame as the camera then slowly changes focus to the background in an ominous manner while spooky music plays where......there's nobody whatsoever present! What is the point of this?

This is 3rd year film school quality at best. Do not waste your money or time on this garbage. The literal only good thing I can say about it is that the lead actress is pretty attractive. That's it.

3/10.

An unbelievable hour long dialogue about "how many eggs do you want, I'm going to go on a hike, how about we movie down here, let me head to the grocery store"-It's unconvincing that these two people are an actual couple. The suspenseful music feels out of place because nothing ever happens, aside from the found footage sort of camera work which is supposed to incite anxiety. When the antagonist finally appears, you just really want the movie to be over with because it's anticlimactic.

No engaged or married couple I know speak to each other like that. It's like someone has never hung around a couple before. The small argument was the only thing that felt real, honestly.