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‘The Stranger’ Review: Cat-and-Mouse Quibi Thriller Works Better in Feature Form, as Seen on Hulu
Maika Monroe stars as a rideshare driver pursued by a deranged passenger in serialized suspense project 'The Stranger,' which helmer Veena Sud recut.
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. 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 he’s largely absent. “This isn’t like last time.” This naturally leads us to wonder whether she is, in fact, making it up, as her pursuer — whose name just so happens to be an anagram of hers — relentlessly follows her with the single-minded intensity of, well, the supernatural entity from “It Follows.” The camera does too, with Paul Yee’s fluid cinematography lending the proceedings an immediacy befitting the life-or-death stakes.
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