Remember Quibi? The short-lived streaming service-turned-punchline, which vastly overestimated how many people felt compelled to watch bite-sized shows and movies on their phones, seems to have done one thing right before being folded into the Roku Channel: allowing creators to retain ownership of their work after a two-year exclusivity window. Not content to let her 13-part thriller series âThe Strangerâ disappear along with the platform on which it debuted, âThe Killingâ creator Veena Sud recut the project into a feature film alongside editor Philip Fowler. Gone are the 8-minute episodes named after the hour in which they take place (beginning with 7 p.m. and ending at 7 a.m.), replaced by a 98-minute Hulu feature that shows no sign of having been overhauled.
Six days after moving to Los Angeles with her dog Pebbles, rideshare driver Clare (Maika Monroe) picks up Carl E. (Dane DeHaan) from a mansion that doesnât belong to him. Itâs odd (albeit not overtly sinister) from the moment he asks to sit up front rather than in the backseat, noticing that she isnât a local based on her reaction to how long itâll take to reach LAX. (Sheâs actually from Wamego, Kansas, as was a certain ruby-slipper-wearing Dorothy; âWizard of Ozâ parallels recur throughout.)
After charming her for a few minutes, he informs her that he murdered the occupants of the pickup spot and seems poised to do the same to her until she deliberately crashes her car and runs away; as fate would have it, alas, this is only the beginning of a long night of cat and mouse in which heâs largely absent. A skilled hacker with an encyclopedic knowledge of the algorithms that hum in the background of our daily lives, his presence is more virtual than physical.
Spare a thought for Monroe, who canât help getting herself into exactly this kind of situation. After her breakthrough performance in âIt Follows,â she established herself as her generationâs preeminent scream queen with equally riveting turns in the likes of âThe Guestâ and âWatcherâ; sheâll next be seen in Neonâs âLonglegsâ alongside Nicolas Cage and is reprising her best-known role in the cleverly titled âThey Follow.â Well suited to this kind of role without feeling limited by it, Monroe excels at playing damsels who invert their distress and rescue themselves. Often seen in closeup on the verge of tears, she embodies a sympathetic vulnerability that canât entirely mask the tenacity emerging from within.
âIâm not making this up,â Clare tells her mother on the phone after being dismissed by the police and suspended by the rideshare company. âThis isnât like last time.â This naturally leads us to wonder whether she is, in fact, making it up, as her pursuer â whose name just so happens to be an anagram of hers â relentlessly follows her with the single-minded intensity of, well, the supernatural entity from âIt Follows.â The camera does too, with Paul Yeeâs fluid cinematography lending the proceedings an immediacy befitting the life-or-death stakes. âThe Strangerâ takes place over 12 hours but has the feeling of realtime.
What it doesnât have is an inventive narrative, with few scenes matching the level of dread created by that inside-the-car opening: the slow realization that something is amiss, the fight-or-flight panic that results from being in a confined space with a confessed murderer who seems to know everything about you. That premise has no shortage of potential, and while the film doesnât squander it, it doesnât maximize it either, to the extent that the behind-the-scenes story (about the projectâs post-Quibi fate) winds up being more distinctive than the actual plot. Monroe is an adept driver as usual â were this a rideshare app, sheâd certainly get five stars â but sheâs behind the wheel of a too-familiar vehicle.