“The Stranger” is a tense if tidy thriller that chronicles a ride-hail driver’s journey to surveillance hell and back. Her survival against all odds mirrors that of the movie itself: The film’s footage originally premiered in 13 short-form episodes in 2020 on the streaming service Quibi, several months before it shut down.
The recut version (on Hulu) bears little trace of its earlier form, although its life span across algorithm-driven streaming companies does cast the villain’s tech preoccupations — “whoever figures out the mathematical formula determining the losers and the winners in life will rule” the world, he declares — in a new, meta light.
Written and directed by Veena Sud (“The Killing”), the film follows Clare (Maika Monroe), a recent transplant to Los Angeles who falls into a freeway nightmare after her ride-hail passenger, Carl (Dane DeHaan), identifies himself as a serial killer. He claims he will murder her unless she tells him a good story.
If this opening sounds cliché, the film at least seems aware of the pitfalls. Sud creates parallels between Clare in Hollywood and Dorothy in Oz, assigning Clare a Kansan back story, a yapping terrier and a guileless attitude. And DeHaan embodies the tech-savvy Carl as a pasty, smirking male chauvinist who is sillier than he is scary.
It follows as something of a surprise, when, over the course of the second act, the film builds to a deeply agitated mood. Sud pulls off the tonal shift by keeping Carl largely offscreen; his looming absence, alongside Monroe’s knack for portraying paranoia, simmers with menace.
The Stranger
Not Rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Watch on Hulu.
