When having a nightmare, there is often a moment when you are suddenly jarred out of a fitful slumber. In writer-director Thomas M. Wright’s The Stranger, a dark drama loosely based on a true story that patiently yet painfully defies convention, we are firmly planted in this moment of terrifying disorientation. Sometimes it takes the form of a literal cut that closely mimics the experience of a nightmare ending. At others, it is a general sense of dread that threatens to consume the characters navigating a world of darkness. It is a work that initially withholds much of its full wickedness before revealing itself to us in macabre yet mesmerizing fashion.
First premiering at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, The Stranger centers on the duo of Mark (Joel Edgerton) and Henry (Sean Harris) who have just met. They appear to be complete strangers and begin to get involved with potentially illicit dealings. It starts when Mark picks up Henry, who had expected to meet with a different man whom he had just met earlier on a bus. They go on tense, largely silent drives where they meet with men in dingy parking lots or hotels that are oddly devoid of almost any other guests besides them. Soon, a cautious Henry begins to trust Mark and opens up to him. It would be hard to call it a friendship, but it feels like the closest that both have had to one in some time. However, as is revealed to us early on, Mark is actually not here to make friends and is not who he is pretending to be. He is actually an undercover cop who is attempting to get information out of the seemingly unsuspecting Henry who is believed to be behind an unsolved murder that happened many years ago.
This is a premise that may sound like it has all the makings of a crime thriller and, in many ways, the literal progression of the plot could easily fall under this banner. What ensures the film finds its way into other thematic and narrative ground comes from its presentation. There is the driving force of trying to piece together the details of the killing and achieve some sense of justice that still remains elusive. With that being said, there is an overbearing and ominous darkness to every interaction. There is no thrill to the chase or joy to the hunt as one may have seen in other stories of undercover investigations. All of that has been whittled away by a weariness that acts like an infection as it takes hold of the entire experience. In particular, Edgerton is outstanding yet understated as he captures the enveloping and overwhelming fear that dominates his character’s life. It comes out in bursts of anger or sadness that he can’t allow to sneak out when undercover. We see the toll this takes on Mark that threatens to tear him apart. There is no glamorizing of this work. There is only a devastating grimness.
While Edgerton helps to bring this all to life, the film would be nowhere near as affecting without Harris alongside him. He disappears completely into a character who is initially reserved though no less haunting. The more Henry begins to open up, the more we begin to see all the more disturbing aspects of him come out into the open. In many ways, his journey serves as a mirror to Mark who we had first believed to be a confident and hardened man who feared nothing. It is only looking back that you realize, from the moment he first picked up Henry, he was playing the part he needed to. He did so both for his own survival and for the sake of the investigation. It is hard to know exactly how much time has passed though it is clearly more than enough for Mark to begin to grow fearful of being found out by Henry.
The petrifying anxiety over his mission pushes him to toe an ethical line in a manner that is never showy yet still deeply disquieting. There is even a moment where, faced with the choice of whether to help someone who had gotten seriously injured or potentially blow his cover by calling for help, Mark flees from a scene he partially caused. It is a fleeting moment, but a revealing one of many that push the story into unexpected places. There is no lasting catharsis or celebration to the process of discovery as everything just keeps getting more crushing in its exploration of these two characters. The compelling yet terrifying truth it is facing down is that there may not be any hope of either coming out fully unscathed.
What proves to be less compelling is when the film pulls back from Mark and Henry to establish some of the details of the investigation surrounding them. This takes the form of glimpses of the other officers and suits planning out the operation. Some of this provides an intriguing juxtaposition where the bureaucracy crashes up against the brutality underlying everything. Where it starts to get a little lost in itself is when timelines converge in a way that feels unnecessary in how it spells out what could have already been inferred. The film seeks to play this as being a big reveal even as we had already been well aware of everything we needed to do without this. It only serves to create an odd narrative junction that severs us out of the unsettling undercurrent the film had been swimming in. The film does dive back in without creating too much of a splash, but there are a couple of scenes that just stick out like a sore thumb. It makes the film less streamlined and, more notably, less sinister when it counts.
What sucks us back into the nuanced nightmare is the way everything else in the film is precisely constructed. In particular, the use of sound is what gets under your skin. There is a striking score of simple yet effective stringed instruments by Oliver Coates, who recently did great work on both Significant Other and Aftersun from this year, though it also goes beyond that in creating a distinct soundscape. From a persistent fluttering sound to a ringing in moments of tension, the film finds fear in even the most basic of conversations. The manner in which these interjections can drown out the dialogue becomes suffocating. Often we get taken out of the normal sound to hear the muffled recording that is capturing all of the conversations. At one moment, when a device fails, the recording takes on a deeper and near demonic tone for just a few words. There is a delicate dance that the film takes part in that approaches being horror before pulling us back from the edge. What makes The Stranger work is how this all creates an experience that feels as though the two men have become almost doomed to a life where they will aimlessly wander in what feels like an Australian purgatory. Whether they ever manage to escape and uncover some sort of closure is irrelevant to the growing rot that threatens to consume their souls no matter what they do.
Rating: B+
The Stranger is now streaming on Netflix.