Review of Stranger by the Lake (2013) by ?Yanite W — 27 May 2014

What a load of rubbish. The 'murder mystery' bit is a sub plot to gay porn. I could not relate to the 'hero', who manages to fall in love with some guy he has only seen from afar and whose only interest is sex in the woods. The dialogue (although translated from French) was awful, boring, and even when they were talking about the murder there was no tension or emotion, just some men speaking lines before doing another porn scene in the bushes or going for a swim.

How this got such a high rating I don't know. It is poorly written, the plot is thin, the motives of the characters even thinner (they just want sex) and the majority of the film is just gay men having sex in the woods. In fact the whole movie is basically suggesting gay men won't worry about seeing you murder someone if you're cute.

The worst part is towards the end (SPOILERS). The killer (who we have known is the killer as he is shown killing a lover, which was witnessed by the hero, who then defends the killer when questioned, which makes absolutely no sense as the 'love' he has is expressed through blank stares and fellatio) suddenly goes on a rampage, eventually chasing the 'hero' through the woods. He has already killed a detective and another man in the 2 minutes prior to this scene, which just gave me the impression that the director got bored of masturbating over men swimming in a lake and figured he'd better wrap this 'story' up. The hero is eventually alone in the dark, with the killer somewhere nearby.... the film cuts to black. After all that ejaculating and fellatio the audience is given an open end that was neither clever or appreciated.