MOscarbradley Review of Stranger by the Lake

Stranger by the Lake (2013)

If you go down to the woods tonight ...

[6/10 · 18 February 2014]

"Stranger by the Lake" arrives already garlanded with the very highest praise possible including a four star review from my friend Michał Oleszczyk. Perhaps, then, my expectations were simply too high but this gay serial-killer thriller never quite took off for me. It started well. It's lakeside setting and the woods around it were beautifully captured in Claire Mathon's cinematography, those characters crucial to the action nicely established; the handsome hero, the over-weight straight guy he befriends, the tall, sexy swimmer he falls for and the swimmer's jealous boyfriend while the sex looks and feels, and is indeed, real. I liked that the film never leaves this setting and I liked the naturalistic use of sounds, the total absence of music and the way director Alain Guiraudie brilliantly establishes the passing of time by long shots of the car-park with the hero's car coming into sight to signal the beginning of a new day. I didn't even mind the first murder which added a frisson of danger to the act of cruising which can be dangerous in itself. But in the end I found it deeply conventional; the characters are never developed beyond the stereotypical and the downward spiral into gay slasher movie is very regrettable. I had hoped for a more subtle comment on this rarely touched on topic than the fairly obvious one we get here. I wanted to come away from this movie feeling something other than "if you go down to the woods tonight be afraid, be very afraid", and sadly I didn't.