Perfect Strangers

Gripping yarn. Great acting. Bonzer photography. Thriller/horror/love story/comedy. Actual West Coast pub.

– Sam Neill summarises the main attractions of Perfect Strangers, Onfilm, December 2003, page 12

....the sort of audacious, brilliantly visualised, and slightly unnerving film we expect from New Zealand filmmakers.

– Australian film writer Ruth Hessey, Inside Film, 3 October 2003

He's a complete stranger, and she's totally and utterly magnetised ... she finds herself drawn to this man, and she doesn't know why. And she follows him to his castle.

– Actor Rachael Blake (Melanie) describes the story, in 2004 documentary The Making of Perfect Strangers

It's a very intimate story, but its set in a very big landscape, and it's set in a very lonely landscape.

– Producer Robin Laing, in 2004 documentary The Making of Perfect Strangers

There's some wild and unpredictable behaviour in this film, and that's very much to do with the wild and unpredictable nature of the place we made it in.

– Actor Sam Neill on filming Perfect Strangers on the West Coast of the South Island

The enduring mystery of the perfect stranger, that unknown and perfect person who will ‘arrive and take us away from all this', remains central to the mythology of romance. We are warned to steer clear of strangers, yet it is as strangers that we fall in love.

– Writer/director Gaylene Preston, in the press kit for Perfect Strangers

Alternating wildly in tone between brooding and anarchic, flawed, muddy, improbable, infuriating, hilarious, bloodied and utterly unbowed, this is a film to celebrate, to love, to hate, but above all to watch, and watch again.

– Capital Times reviewer Graeme Tuckett, 11 February 2004

This cat and mouse game and tantric tale combines many filmic nuances and homages, and trumpets Preston's best work to date.

– Christchurch Star reviewer Nick Paris, 8 February 2004

Let's go.

– Melanie (Rachael Blake) cuts to the chase, after meeting a stranger at the bar (Sam Neill)

Don't die ... please don't die.

– One of the characters in Perfect Strangers

...I wanted to be able to move genres, and take this film into gothic and out of gothic, and all over the place.

– Writer/director Gaylene Preston, in the DVD commentary for Perfect Strangers

I hate the bush ... People wander in there you know, and they never come out again.

– Melanie (Rachael Blake) to the hunter she meets at the bar (Paul Glover)

...[Rachael Blake] delivers a bruising, naturalistic performance of considerable nuance and brilliance. Paired with a moody, menacing Sam Neill, Blake is a certain award contender.

– Reviewer Frank Hatherley, Screen Daily, 14 August 2003

...an intriguing, virtually unclassifiable romantic thriller fantasy ... Gaylene Preston's generally taut and well directed pic is her best work in film to date. Thematically, Strangers has links to Preston's accomplished first feature, Mr. Wrong (1984), a supernatural yarn in which a woman was menaced by a mysterious man. Both elements resurface here, but in a fresh, updated approach.

– Veteran Australian critic David Stratton, in American screen magazine Variety, 31 July 2003

[Rachael] Blake is sensational ... while [Sam] Neill brings his customary charm, plus a dash of menace ... [Joel] Tobeck is extremely effective, successfully transforming what at first seems to be a boozy, uncouth loudmouth into a more rounded character.

– Veteran critic David Stratton praises the core cast of Perfect Strangers, Variety, 31 July 2003

I like films where goodies are baddies. I have very strong ideas that black and white, goodie versus baddie films are bad for us. I'm also sick of going to pictures where everyone can guess the end before it's even a quarter of the way through.

– Writer/director Gaylene Preston, Inside Film, 3 October 2003

...half of the film doesn't make sense and the other half is deliriously, defiantly silly. The best things about the film are its tantalising title — suggestive and neatly ambiguous — and its West Coast setting.

– NZ Herald writer Peter Calder in a two-star review, February 2004

It's really about how far you fall when you fall in love.

– Writer/director Gaylene Preston, in 2004 documentary The Making of Perfect Strangers

Anyone know 'em? ... Well that's a start.

– Melanie (Rachael Blake) and her friends scope out the potential talent at the bar, early in Perfect Strangers

I think of that film as being a bookend to Mr Wrong. They are both spooky thrillers with an allegory travelling through. In the case of Perfect Strangers, it is about the dangerous deception of desire, that suggests the prey becoming the predator. In the right mood you may find it funny. In a different one, you may just be terrified.

– Gaylene Preston compares Perfect Strangers to her first feature Mr Wrong, in her 2022 autobiography Gaylene's Take - Her Life in New Zealand Film, page 341

A little bit aunty, a little bit tyrant, a little bit art film director. Gaylene's from the West Coast and they breed strong women down there.

– Sam Neill describes Gaylene Preston's approach to directing, after saying he was "tactfully bullied" by her to do the film, Onfilm, December 2003, page 12

...from very early on the images are given a very subtle discordant quality by the use of slightly skewed angles, camera movement and lighting which convey the woman's various psychic states...

– Author Duncan Petrie on Alun Bollinger's cinematography for Perfect Strangers, in Petrie's 2007 book Shot in New Zealand - The Art and Craft of the Kiwi Cinematographer, page 107

Probably one of the most savagely beautiful corners of the world imaginable.

– Sam Neill describes the real life hut where much of the film was shot, Onfilm, December 2003, page 12

...a beautifully shot and staged modern fairy tale saturated with [Angela] Carteresque paradox.

– Writer Estella Tincknell praises Perfect Strangers, in 2007 book New Zealand Filmmakers, page 82

...my interest in a more mythological tale telling springs from the fact that I come from a generation of feminist women who felt a strong need for some new fairy tales (Cinderella has a lot to answer for).

– Writer/director Gaylene Preston, as quoted by Estella Tincknell in 2007 book New Zealand Filmmakers, page 82

[The film] is about the power of interpersonal projection in romantic love being close to madness. [The audience] don't get to watch someone go mad, they get to go a little bit crazy themselves.

– Writer/director Gaylene Preston, as quoted by Estella Tincknell in 2007 book New Zealand Filmmakers, page 84

[Gaylene Preston]'s exploration of the uncanny, the relationship between the strange and the familiar, and a feminist concern with the power relations of gender is brought to fruition in what is undoubtedly Preston's most accomplished and mature feature film, Perfect Strangers.

– Writer Estella Tincknell in 2007 book New Zealand Filmmakers, page 82