WHEN STRANGERS APPEAR is the most derivate, amateur and dull feature film I've seen all year.
Shot in New Zealand but set in Oregon, this evocatively titled (ahem!) `thriller' has all the twists and turns of the Brooklyn Bridge.
In a small Smalltown inhabited by half a dozen people, a young woman opens up the `off-the-interstate' diner called `Weekers'. Suddenly, a young stranger appears outside and waits-tantalisingly out of focus, till she brews the coffee. Then the stranger enters and they mouth inanities at each other till the stranger excuses himself. In the bathroom he reveals that he has a strange stomach injury. Then three more strangers appear and order breakfast, but the first stranger signals her from the kitchen that the other three strangers are really dangerous. They're stranger/killers after a strange computer disc that the first stranger has in his possession. Who can she believe? Which of the strangers can she trust?.
Reynolds tries to create a `style' by inserting pointless close ups of brewing coffee sizzling on a hot plate. This is supposed to contribute `atmosphere', but it all feels forced and second-hand. The mis-en-scene is all meaningless camera moves and mismatched cuts.
It's almost worth sticking around for the climax, which is a new benchmark in blithering incompetence. After a car crashes into a petrol pump at a gas station (imaginatively named `GAS'), petrol sprays everywhere soaking villains, heroes, cars, well.... everything. After a ridiculously hokey plot-device (which I won't spoil because it's too synapse-draining) ignites a spark, the villains become engulfed in flames while the heroine, mere inches away, magically avoids immolation (remember they're all soaked to the skin in gasoline). Ummmmm....how? Oh, I guess it must have read really cool on paper, but onscreen it unfolds like it's been shot by a kid with a handicam. It's the Curse of Watching too many Michael Bay Movies, (and worse-actually finding them inspirational). Fast cuts and close ups are frantically plastered over mortal wounds in logic. This is a dot-to-dot reconstruction of what a stay-at-home video nerd thinks a film should deliver. If only post-Tarantino parasites like Reynolds would drag themselves away from memorising Maltin's Movie Guide and actually live a little, get laid, travel or get into a fight, then maybe, they'd have enough life experience to make something worth watching, rather than churning out this recycled garbage.
