Summing up our morbid fascination with the medium in microcosm, any film or television title focusing on a spate of bloody murders is destined to capture attention on streaming, regardless of how terrible it is. Despite the presence of A-listers Halle Berry and Bruce Willis in the lead roles, 2007’s Perfect Stranger has got to be deemed as one of the worst.
A box office bomb that barely recouped its substantial $60 million budget from theaters, the film was also an unmitigated critical catastrophe, with the passage of time failing to increase its Rotten Tomatoes score above a diabolical 10 percent. And yet, because the plot involves a murder mystery and elements of the serial killer thriller, it’s back in a big way on-demand.
Per FlixPatrol, Perfect Stranger has emerged as one of the most popular features on the iTunes global charts, even if there are literally dozens upon dozens of vastly superior movies of a very similar ilk available at the push of a button. A popular genre and recognizable names are a reliable draw, though, even if a lot of viewers might find themselves bored long before the laughable twist reveals itself.
Berry plays a journalist who goes undercover to dig into the alleged misdeeds of Willis’ advertising executive, who she thinks is the culprit behind her best friend’s murder. Throwing catfishing into play, she assumes a false identity in an effort to uncover the truth, which inevitably and tediously devolves into a tangled web of death, deceit, and double crossings that it’s incredibly hard to care about even the slightest.
Published: Apr 3, 2023 01:40 am