Experimental films are usually of a smaller budget and of a lesser quality. What they lack in quality they make up for in creativity. That’s the case with A Stranger In The Woods from Writer, Producer, and Director Jozef Gallai. He chose to use the usual tropes of horror films but also used some interesting other methods to get the story across to viewers. 

Edith (Laura Ellen Wilson) is a student who has a senior project she has to do. What it is is she has to interview somebody who has an interesting life. Her teacher gives her the location of a man Victor Browning (Bill Oberest Jr.) who lives on his own in seclusion in a wooded area with a lake adjacent to his home. She arrives at his home and he’s not exactly who she envisioned he was going to be. He’s a bit of a strange and eccentric man.

As I mentioned, the writer/director uses some interesting tools and styles to create this story. One of them is night vision as the main character is stumbling through the night looking for a stranger she saw standing outside the house. Another style he uses is phone calls and video calls to get information across to viewers. The best of them all in a stroke of genius is a police dispatch call with the dispatcher and various police officers.

The man in the house is a strange character. At first, he jokes about not being who he is and then he acts weird while eating breakfast one morning. Throwing the dishes down and breaking the plate. He didn’t like the food his guest made him. Apparently, he has a specific palette she was not privy to beforehand.  These specific instances have shown the main character that she is in an odd situation. 

Films like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, and Skinamarink come to mind when I think about A Stranger In the Woods. It has the specific vibes of those groundbreaking films. The budget had to be rather small so with that has to come creativity behind and in front of the camera. Gallai used unknowns for his cast and that didn’t distract from the styles he used in his filmmaking. That was a good thing.

A documentary style of filmmaking is added to the overall finished product to bring the movie all the way home. The docudrama style lets the audience learn about its characters more than it had to that point in the film. The backstory of the two characters was quite fascinating and gave me ideas about where this story could go. Not giving any spoilers though but all the little details are there for viewers to see for themselves.  This is a classic story of a creature of the night but hidden in an experimental docudrama style.

A Stranger in the Woods combines a few different styles to create a Haunting tale of this woman and the documentary subject. Various things like video calls, a police dispatch phone call, and night vision combine to make an interesting experimental film. The cast of unknowns to American audiences was effective in creating a dark and forbidding atmosphere. All around this was a good movie considering the obstacles in Gallai’s way of making this film. I hope audiences find it as fascinating as I did. 

3 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen