The Stranger is a darkly spoken and sometimes convoluted, yet an incredibly bleak and stomach-churning Australian true crime drama that's tough to think about and not for everyone. A viewer doesn't need to know or have even really heard about the Daniel Morcombe case, in which The Stranger is based on catching the child's killer, to see the obvious strength and effort put into this movie, although it's completely easy to see why the reviews are so mixed, and why others hated this movie and thought it was boring and dull.
Actors Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris both give equally as powerful performance throughout, following Edgerton as an undercover cop who is tasked with forming a serious relationship with Harris enrolling a murder/kidnapping suspect in order to gain his trust and elicit a confession. Despite this being a very slow movie that you couldn't really call truly entertaining, you need to start off by paying attention, because the film dives into its plot without much character development, which considering it nearly reaches the brink of 2 hours, it could definitely use some backstory for the characters.
The colours and looks of every scene in this movie are just as dark and bleak as the subject matter. There's no visual light where there's no light side to the themes of child abduction and murder. A big turn-off for a lot of people will also be the dialogue, not only being slow, but with a very Australian accent and mumbled talking, which very much suits the tone and characters appearances, but you'll need subtitles to not finish feeling completely muffled. The Stranger isn't a film you can just watch when you're falling asleep in bed, it demands your full attention and if you aren't completely bored by the pacing, it's worth sticking through to the end.
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