Perfect Strangers

Yeah. Great movie. All about how ugly life is if you don't ever question anything. two nitwits act out the different imperatives of their egos and we have murder and tedium. This movie gets made because Canada, New Zealand and to some extent, Australia, have some kind of post-colonial guilt going on and this has backfired into 'all women directors must get their movies published' However, Hollywood only publishes crap by men so I guess its all even.

This movie Isn't uplifiting, Isn't kind, Isn't beautiful, Isn't clever, Isn't witty.

It has few redeeming qualities except for the wild landscape. Hey! take out the people and the story and this is one HELL of a nature documentary.

If you see this movie and think that it 'shows life as it really is', you need to get out more. And to the person who said it describes the 'dating scene' out there, I say: bollocks.

Oh and the acting wasn't great either.

This movie has been hanging out in the New Release section of blockbuster stores since the day it arrived on DVD around a year ago. That's because people keep re-renting it (no, not me...I bought my own copy). My praise will not do this movie justice. I have not seen Sam Neill act more convincingly in a movie. He got that mysterious stranger role down perfectly. Rachel Blake was extraordinary. You just couldn't take your eyes off either one of them (regardless of the condition they were in). This is a beautiful movie, with stunning actors, breathtaking scenery, and haunting music. While watching the movie, you'll find yourself asking yourself "what would I do?". You'll also say to yourself "I must get that soundtrack!" I highly recommend it! @-->--> Kris

I rented this while I was staying in NZ and sat down prepared for a love story that turns into something like Fatal Attraction or something. Not at all. I appreciate the plot twists and enjoyed the extreme weirdness. Not horrible but not fantastic either ( in my opinion.

All in all I think the acting was pretty believable, but there are some plot holes (pretty gaping ones actually). However the story is pretty consistent with details from the beginning being carried over through the end.

I will look for movies with the lead actress and this director again in the future.

Enjoyable for those with twisted minds.

I was reminded slightly of a current Australian release, 'Japanese story" which is also largely a two-hander, and has lots of time spent in remote locations. And it too has a fairly major plot twist along the way. But comparisons run out there. Rachael Blake is just as fine an actress as Toni Collette, but what she has to do here seems quite ludicrous. I get concerned when people begin to talk to whitegoods, for instance. You might find that at one point you think, where can this film go from here? And I don't think that question is resolved at all. The second half of the film in particular gets more and more bizarre and kooky, and even at the end I think many people would say "huh?'. Sam Neill was OK too, but I can't for the life of me think what possessed him to do this film. As a student film it would be acceptable, but not as a general release.

It starts like a conventional girl-goes-home-with-the-wrong-man-horror. After a while it is almost relation comedy and psycho drama and relation comedy again.

You miss the traditional agenda here. This is perhaps a form experiment, mixing genres. But the mix is not done in a clever way. You expect something to happen, a real climax, but it never comes and you are slowly getting uninterested.

This kind of genre mixing can be exciting, but the actors here are not capable of fulfilling the director's intentions. A failure and not a very good one.