The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Mysterious Strangers are unknown persons who appear out of the blue and have a disruptive influence on the everyday lives of people. There is usually some mystery, if not outright enigma, about who they are and where they come from. Strangers can be magical, sinister, alien or psychopathic in nature.
Sometimes mysterious strangers might have a magical transformative influence – such as Mary Poppins and Nanny McPhee. Other times the strangers might have malevolent influence or else have a strong charisma that influences and seduces others.
There is also a body of films that began with Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema (1968) about mysterious strangers who have the ability to create Miracles. In almost all cases, these individuals are ambiguous and it is not always clear if their miraculous influence is for good or evil.
Antonio Banderas is a writer with a block, Jonathan Rhys Meyers a sinister stranger who moves in. Lots of tense psychological games between the two begin only for the film to almost immediately blow the premise
An interesting little film from Adam Mason that starts out seeming a variant on The Hitcher with Andrew Howard as a drifter taunting a couple on a desert highway before morphing into something very strange
A cryptically surreal Dutch film that comes with hilariously black deadpan effect as we watch a homeless man inveigle his way into a household and take over before starting to eliminate people.
Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly adapts a Richard Matheson story about a couple who are offered a terrible choice by a stranger but delivers a bafflingly incomprehensible film
Unexpectedly good film with Madolyn Smith as a woman living alone in a cabin in the woods and Malcolm McDowell as a caller where the two engage in a series of cat and mouse games where nothing is what it seems
Finally, the answer to what happened to Marc Caro after parting ways with Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Caro directs what would appear to be a darkly lit and confusing variation on The Green Mile set on a space station
Anime where a mysterious other-dimensional stranger aids future rebels. This has a wonderfully ornate Gothic feel but an entirely confusing plot
Classic fantasy film in which Death takes human form to visit a party and experience the human condition. Frederic March gives us Death as a comically eccentric outsider and the film has some great moments of imagination
Fascinating no-budget South Korean film about a mysterious catastrophe and an even more mysterious godlike stranger who appears in its aftermath. Enigma like the best of Andrei Tarkovsky
Uwe Boll seems to be improving. Here he has abandoned action for a character-driven drama about the appearance of an ambiguous stranger heralding the Biblical end of the world
Brutal Michael Haneke film where a family’s weekend getaway becomes a nightmare when two boys enter the house and proceed to torture and kill them. Haneke adds a level of meta-fiction that taunts the viewer’s participation
Michael Haneke’s English-language remake of his earlier home invasion film has a sense of pointlessness to it. But in following the original so closely, it also cannot help but work where it did
Adam Wingard thriller about a sinister stranger who inveigles his way into a household. This does well playing off the handsomely polished charms of Dan Stevens, less well when it turns into an a left field action film
A Clint Eastwood directed/starring Western in which he plays a gunslinger who turns up in a town and exposes the guilty secrets of the townspeople in what is eventually revealed to be a supernatural twist
This has quite a few similarities to the underrated The Wind with Sarah Paulson as a mother in the 1930s Dustbowl seeing possible supernatural figures amid the dust storms, which could just as easily be fraying sanity
Kevin Spacey is a mysterious patient in a psychiatric institution who makes possibly true claims to be an alien. An uncredited ripoff of the far superior Man Facing Southeast
A rather effective effort about a Mysterious Stranger locked in a cell who proceeds to expose the dark secrets of everybody around him, before a completely whacked ending
An extraordinary Argentinean film about a patient in his asylum who insists that he is an alien and has genteel affect on the inmates. Later uncreditedly ripped-off as K-PAX.
Disney classic that is mostly a series of dance and effects sequences strung together without any real plot nevertheless is conducted with a dizzying absurdism and perfect charm that never wears out its welcome
Mary Poppins was one of the greatest of all Disney live-action films, made with nonsensical charm and has become a much loved favourite. As part of the ongoing firesale that involves resurrecting almost all of their properties, this is a sequel. Its an exacting replication/homage to the original but that is the problem – it is a recapturing rather than seems to create its own sparkle
Emma Thompson written and starring adaptation of a series of children’s books comes across as a lesser copy of Mary Poppins. A film that feels like it should have been more than it ends up being.
I never much cared for Nanny McPhee. This is a sequel that replicates the original in fairly much the same amount mix of plot elements, slapstick sequences and nonsensical absurdism
A very strange film where widow Adrienne Barbeau finds an amnesiac Keir Dullea on a Greek island who shows mysterious abilities and may have come from the future
Another of the films with sinister-sounding adjectives that sprung up in the wake of Insidious, this is a cut price copy of The Omen about a child resurrected from the dead who causes a series of deaths
New Zealand made film about a woman who falls under the influence of a sinister stranger who plies her with drugs
In the vein of Pasolini’s Teorema, French director Bruno Dumont makes a film about an ambiguous visitor who may be capable of miracles. Slow, very opaque but eventually rewarding
Very odd early Peter Weir film about a strange plumber who moves in and takes over cautious Judy Morris’s apartment
A multi-director horror anthology where all the directors are Latin American
Stephen King adaptation with Johnny Depp as a writer in a cabin in the woods harassed by mysterious stranger John Turturro. Screenwriter David Koepp directs a marvellously chill Turturro with lots of twisty surprises
Film where recovering addict Balthazar Getty is dragged into an underworld of vice by mysterious stranger Peter Weller
A film of fascinating ambiguities that stars Alan Bates as a mystery man who appears to John Hurt and demonstrates a killing shout he learned among the Aborigines
One of the best Stephen King tv mini-series with Colm Feore as a mysterious stranger who manipulates and turns an entire town against themselves
One of the strangest films of the 1940s, featuring Clark Gable, Joan Crawford and others as a group of Devil’s Island escapees who realise during the course of their journey that one of the company is Jesus Christ
Eli Roth produced film made in Chile, this concerns a mysterious stranger to town who turns out to be a vampire that is soon sought and hunted by everybody. A promising premise given a not terribly interesting handling
A British film about a mother and daughter who open a B&B only to be taken hostage by a mysterious stranger on the run from sinister forces
Pier Paolo Pasolini makes a film in which a Christ-like visitor appears, seduces all the members of an upper-class family and departs, leaving their lives changed. A fascinating study in the effects of religion on ordinary lives
Strange Australian film set in the Outback with Peter Coyote as an ambiguous stranger who claims to have been sent from God
An eccentrically oddball comedy in which a man discovers that his strange roommate may be a comic-book super-villain. Made independently but with a dry wit that is hard to resist
This is a 1950s Coming of Age story with Patrick Swayze as a mysterious stranger dispensing wisdom, before the film arrives at a very peculiar fantastic ending
This has the intriguing hook of casting 1990s teen heartthrob Val Kilmer as a supernaturally empowered mysterious stranger. It soon becomes apparent that the film is a variant on Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter. After blowing its twist soon in, the film only proceeds to a desultory ending
The novelty of the first Christian horror film. As opposed to much of the message-heavy tripe that usually gets peddled in this niche market, this is actually well structured with a number of interesting ambiguities and engaging as a story for the better part
One of the key films in the cult of Takashi Miike that has been frequently banned for its taboo-defying outrages in which a mysterious visitor causes a family household to descend into perverse extremes
South Korean horror film that generates a more than effectively creepy atmosphere. The downside is that you reached the end of the show with no clear idea what is going on and why things are happening
Australian film where a girl turns up at the trailer home of a recluse. A series of tense psychological games ensue where it becomes apparent neither of them are being truthful