Cultural infamy: Beyond a super-generic
title that inspires little more than Balki Bartokomous references? Critics were
nearly unanimous in finding Perfect Stranger a mediocrity at best, a
travesty at worst: Its 31 Metacritic score puts it firmly in the red, and it
scores a 10 on the Tomatometer, with only 14 of the 123 sampled critics in
favor of it—many of those from dubious-sounding Internet outlets. Among
the money quotes: "Halle Berry enters that stage of her career where we
seriously consider asking for her Oscar back" (Ty Burr, Boston Globe), "a rote compendium of
Internet paranoia clichés, with frequent pauses to admire Berry's derriere, décolletage,
and related assets" (Lisa Schwartzbaum, Entertainment Weekly), and "a disorienting
cocktail of illogic and hysteria that requires an 11th-hour soliloquy just to
explain what's happened" (John Anderson, Variety). In
her review, our own Tasha Robinson never found a satisfying answer to
the rhetorical question, "Why is any of this idiocy happening?"
Curiosity factor: Reports from trusted
friends touting the film as a modern so-bad-it's-good classic were actually a
bit superfluous; I was already on board. I have a helpless fascination with
thrillers about technology, particularly those that know just enough about
it—which is to say, very little—to be scared out of their wits.
(See also: I Watched This On Purpose:
Untraceable, featuring death by page views and the attack of
the runaway OnStar system.) Invariably, they're all horribly dated, often at
the time they've released, and their alarmist messages are never worth the
hysteria: Is anyone still worried that e-commerce will lead us all to become
freakish shut-ins, like Sandra Bullock in The Net? Or that our conflicts will
all play out on the virtual battlefields laid out by Tron, Disclosure, or Virtuosity? Tech-thrillers always
reach the grimmest imaginable conclusions. Chat rooms? A haven for sexual
predators. Instant messaging? The death of meaningful communication. Web cams?
The exclusive province of deviants or, if Antitrust is to be believed, Bill
Gates. For those of us who have happily incorporated all these advancements
into our lives without becoming loveless trolls or having our purity violated
by Second Life,
the brand of paranoia whipped up by Perfect Stranger is pretty hilarious.
Other curiosities: The train-wreck factor of
watching Halle Berry's career spiral further downward, seemingly never to hit
bottom. Another sure-to-be-bizarre turn from Giovanni Ribisi, who may be the
only young actor capable of winning a tic-off against Jeremy Davies. And
direction by James Foley, whose résumé includes Glengarry Glen Ross on one end, and the
Madonna vehicle Who's That Girl on the other. Which Foley would show up? And could
anyone save a whodunit that was reportedly shot with three different endings, à
la Clue?
The viewing experience: Gloriously lame-brained.
Let's start with the closing voiceover, which underlines (and highlights, and
tacks exclamation points on) the film's prissy attitude about the
humanity-sucking world of Internet communication:
"It starts with a quiet hum, an empty screen
inviting you. 'Come inside,' it says. 'We're always open.' It's a world you
think where actions have no consequences, where guilt is cloaked in anonymity,
where there are no fingerprints. An invisible universe filled with strangers,
interconnected online and disconnected in life. It will steal your secrets,
corrupt your dreams, and co-opt your identity. Because in this world, where you
can be anything you want, anyone you want, you just might lose sight of who you
are."
Pretty deep stuff. Perhaps there's a slogan in
there for Google's new web browser: "It will steal your secrets and corrupt
your dreams." In any case, that bit of narration places Perfect Stranger firmly in the tradition
of clueless technophobic paranoid thrillers. Though computer wizardry does play
a positive role early in the film, when Berry's character, a gotcha journalist
for a New York tabloid, gets the goods on a Mark Foley-like congressional
intern scandal, the interwebs soon carry more sinister implications.
Specifically, the film points the finger at the Instant Messaging phenomenon,
which is one part erotic to 10 parts creepy, invasive, and potentially
murderous.
The crazily convoluted plot opens with Berry
quitting her job after her congressional scandal piece (Headline: "Sachs-ual Harassment")
gets spiked for political reasons. But her keen investigative skills are given
no time to atrophy when the body of childhood friend turns up bloated and
mutilated in a river. Suspicions fall on a major advertising executive and
notorious philanderer played by Bruce Willis, who apparently enjoyed the
victim's company for a weekend and wrote her love letters via Hotmail with
lines like, "I'm going to fuck you so hard, I'm going to split you in half."
Pouring herself into tight, just-this-side-of-professional work garments, Berry
infiltrates Willis' agency by taking a temp job, then does whatever she can to
get information out of him. With the help of computer-savvy friend (and secret
stalker) Ribisi, Berry takes on a virtual identity, too, and starts to engage
Willis in white-hot IM exchanges like this one:
Perfect Stranger is loaded with
nail-biting, computer-related thriller moments, like a scene where Berry and
Willis are web-chatting within 10 feet of each other ("The IMs are coming from
inside the office!!!," says I) and another heart-stopper that has Willis
sidling over to Berry's desk as an incriminating image is frozen on her
monitor. (How does Berry handle this terrible crisis while still remaining sexy
and flirtatious? It's called acting, people.) Still, there's a part of me that
laments that the film had to be a thriller at all; I could have watched a whole
movie of Halle Berry just typing away in a chat room, a babe in the woods,
luring serial masturbators like a virtual Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Once the thriller plotting takes over completely,
Foley and screenwriter Tom Komarnicki lurch into lurid, seemingly unnecessary
flashbacks to Berry's childhood, introduce the many red herrings that could
result in three possible endings, and work to scare moviegoers into never
allowing their eyes to be dilated again. Needless to say, the big twist is as
arbitrary as it gets, since it was more or less decided upon like a Choose
Your Own Adventure
book. The big voiceover monologue at the end was necessary just to remind us
that Perfect Stranger was once concerned with weightier issues, like all the filth
that gets shuttled through the series of tubes.
Ah, but there is one more element to savor:
Giovanni Ribisi at his most anti-charismatic. Tasked with suggesting a perhaps
unhealthy obsession with Berry's character, Ribisi goes several steps further by
making every line-reading and physical gesture so unsavory that any rational
woman would issue a restraining order. I'll spare you his ickiest scene for
fear of spoiling the movie, so I'll leave you with the following exchange.
Watch where Ribisi's hand goes:
How much of the experience wasn't a total waste
of time?
About 50 percent. There's nothing novel about a badly plotted
whodunit—though this one is particularly convoluted—but between
Berry and Ribisi's ripe performances and the trumped-up anti-Internet hysteria, Perfect Stranger
belongs on the clueless techno-thriller pantheon.