Stranger in the Woods (2024)

Stranger-in-the-Woods
Stranger in the Woods

Most of the time, experimental films have low budgets and are pegged as low-quality films. What they lack in quality they make up in creativity. This is also the case with A Stranger In The Woods by Writer, Producer, and Director Jozef Gallai. He blends classical horror film clichés with some more sophisticated means of storytelling.

Edith (Laura Ellen Wilson) has her senior project she is a student tasked to complete. What it is is she has to interview somebody who has an interesting life. This teacher directs her to a man Victor Browning (Bill Oberest Jr.) who lives alone in a secluded area, surrounded by trees and not far from a lake. She shows up at his house and he is not what she thought. He’s a little odd and very eccentric.

The author/director, as I’ve noted, employs some remarkable resources and techniques in telling this particular tale. One of them is night vision as the protagonist is searching for a man whom she spotted near the house. Another technique he employs is using phone calls and video calls to relay certain events to the audience. Best of all is a stroke of genius a police dispatch call with the dispatcher and numerous police members and officers.

The man living in the house is a rather odd personality. At once, he cracks a joke about playing somebody he is not, and apparently, quite strangely, he behaves in a rather unusual manner during breakfast one day. He makes a big scene breaking dishes and throwing down the plates. He didn’t enjoy the meal his guest had prepared for him. Apparently, she had some special food preferences which he didn’t tell her about in advance. These particular scenarios have impressed the main protagonist that the situation she is in is rather unusual.

A Stranger In the Woods is accompanied by the films The Blair Witch Project and, in a similar vein, Paranormal Activity, as well as Skinamarink films that also likely come to mind. A more accurate comparison you can make would be those specific helps. The film was shot on a low budget so, with that, one has to come up with inventive ideas both in front of and behind the camera. Gallai cast nonprofessionals and it did not spoil the styles that he employed for his filmmaking. That was a positive fact.

To complete the film, the producers incorporate a documentary mode into the final cut of the film. Using the docudrama style broadens the audience’s insight into its characters than it had up to that time in the film. The two characters’ backstories were simply very interesting and gave me ideas as to how this plot may unfold. Not giving any spoilers though but all the finer details are there for the viewers to look out for. This is a common tale about a dark angel but buried in an artistic mockumentary format.

A Stranger in the Woods prize kowe is probably a bit easier and smoother than it sounds as it is called combining a few different styles to create a Haunting tale of this woman and the documentary subject also sounds better than the finished picture actually was. Things like video calls, a police dispatch, phone calls, and night vision come together to make for an interesting experimental film. The ensemble of seamen unknown to the American audience was successful in engulfing the audience in their vividly dark forbidding world. All around this was a good movie considering the hurdles in Gallai’s way of making this movie. I do hope that the viewers find it as captivating as I did.

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