Perfectly adorable

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

As a previous reviewer pointed out, this is a vampire movie that doesn't seem like a vampire movie at first. It becomes obvious pretty early on but it doesn't feel like even good vampire movies that are out there. The problem comes from the characters. The writing is a god-awful vomit of words that just seems so fake as to be a parody of itself. The goofy thugs on "the stranger"'s first night were so brazen as to be impossible to believe. The corrupt cop dad showing up... OK, I can buy that. But then he starts acting as if absolutely nobody will do anything to him for not only dragging the body of a murder victim off to hide it for his idiotic son but then he picks up the kid, sets him on fire, pulls him off of a bus in front of dozens of passengers and... How do you write this and not see how insanely goofy this is?The main characters aren't QUITE as unbelievable but the outright stupidity of some of them can't be believed either. Conceptually it had potential. The execution was a miserable failure

This movie had potential. Conceptually it is a solid take on the Vampire genre and it was shot well, but.... But. It is like the movie was directed and written by a 10 year old. The dialog was just way too simple and I felt like I was watching some dubbed Italian horror flick from the 70's. Not that there is anything wrong with dubbed Italian horror flicks from the 70's. I actually find them to be charming. But, it's 2016 and the fact that I was constantly distracted by these attributes was fairly annoying. Worth watching on a rainy day, but I wouldn't put it on the must watch bucket list.

'THE STRANGER': Three and a Half Stars (Out of Five)Horror flick from writer/director Guillermo Amoedo, and producers Eli Roth and Nicolas Lopez (the three also worked together on 'AFTERSHOCK', 'THE GREEN INFERNO' and 'KNOCK KNOCK'). This film tells the story of a mysterious stranger, with a deadly disease, who comes to town looking for his wife; but death and chaos follows him. The movie stars Cristobal Tapia Montt, Nicolás Durán, Luis Gnecco, Ariel Levy, Alessandra Guerzoni, Lorenza Izzo and Aaron Burns. It's an interesting and well made vampire drama flick.Martin (Tapia Montt) comes back home, to a small town, looking for his wife, Ana (Izzo). Instead he finds trouble, in the form of a gang of violent hooligans. Martin is attacked, and left for dead, by the criminals; but a young man, named Peter (Durán), comes to his rescue. A police officer, named Lieutenant De Luca (Gnecco), is the father of one of the gang members; and he's used to covering up his son's crimes. The Lieutenant is extremely troubled by the presence of this mysterious stranger. When the townsfolk learn what Martin's blood can do, things become even more crazy; and violent.The movie takes it's time getting going, but it's worth the wait. It's not full of excessive gore, like a lot of vampire flicks, but it's got enough action and thrills, to keep most viewers entertained. All of the performances are decent enough, and Amoedo does a more than adequate job directing. I look forward to seeing more from him, and the Roth/Lopez/Amoedo team, in the future!Watch our movie review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: https://youtu.be/rHh87mlE5WQ

The log-line for the movie is very simple, a mysterious man shows up at a home in a small Canadian town. Thing promptly go sideways for not only the Stranger but also for just about everyone he encounters, plunging the town into a bloodbath.The trailer for the movie gave me the impression it was some sort of early outbreak style horror film. The type of movie that tells how patient zero started the end of the world. It certainly could have gone in the direction I suppose but the film turns out to be much smaller in scope than expected, taking a different approach to an old horror trope. Who the Stranger searching for and why he needs to find them are clues that filmmaker Amoedo provides sparingly. The back story is filled in through flashbacks designed to provide the audience with motivation for the Stranger's actions.The film is engaging to a degree but it's got serious flaws. The mystery is enough to keep you in it to the end and the gore and violence are well handled, if not brutal. The acting is extremely uneven but isn't bad enough to drag the movie down. Where the movie falls short for me is in how Amoedo handles the characters. There isn't really a likable character in the entire film. The old rule of storytelling is give the reader/viewer/listener one character they can root for. Amoedo gives us that…sort of. To start, everyone is damaged. All are worn out or on drugs or lost. The hero(es) are just terrible at standing up for themselves. None of them make good decisions. They're all inconsistent, or weak or just give into terrible situations without pushing back, taking a stand or trying to get help from someone outside of town. This becomes frustrating quickly because the villains are evil… and when I say evil I mean really evil.They kill, maim, beat, torture, cover-up, intimidate, circumvent, and subdue anyone or anything that appear as a threat to them. They do all this without any compunction or real fear of being detected. The impunity with which the antagonists operate comes across as a bit implausible given the setting of the movie. Corrupt police are easier to swallow in bigger cities, but in a small (nice looking) Canadian town it's harder to accept based on the scope of the nefarious activities our antagonists are engaging in. This has a significant impact on the film's climax. When the final act begins the terrible transition that should push our Big Bad to another level of menace falls flat because we've already seen him be so damned evil it doesn't matter he's now an evil monster.The Stranger falls squarely in the middle of the spectrum. It's worth seeing once and I enjoyed the unique approach to an old idea, but the execution was sloppy, leaving me less than thrilled when the movie finally came to it's conclusion.Perhaps my review would best be summed up with one word… Meh.