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‘Stranger Eyes’ Review: Yeo Siew Hua’s Elegant, Haunted Thriller About Voyeurism In a Time of Surveillance
Yeo Siew Hua's 'Stranger Eyes' uses genre trappings as a mere jumping-off point for a moving, moody reflection on social isolation and alienation.
Yeo’s previous feature, the fluorescent neo-noir “A Land Imagined,” put him on the auteur map in 2018 by winning the top prize at Locarno, and announced — after his more experimental 2009 debut “In the House of Straw” — an affinity for genre-styled narratives with tricky time-hopping structures and a measure of social conscience. As “Stranger Eyes” pivots to focus on Wu and his silent, stifling solitude — and the panoply of distant, one-sided relationships he forms to feel less alone in the world — the grave, sorrowful reserve of Lee’s presence gives the film a well of emotion beneath its sharp narrative design, shimmery-cool cinematography and timely technophobia. “You just have to watch someone closely enough,” Zheng advises the couple, “and at some point, even if he’s not a criminal, he will turn into one.” Still, amid its consistently tense, paranoid thriller trappings, Yeo’s film also functions in close-up, as a bittersweet, slightly broken-hearted character study, and a paean to lost era of community and trust.
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