Perfect Stranger (film)

Plot

Under the pen name David Shane, reporter Rowena Price (Halle Berry) and researcher Miles Haley (Giovanni Ribisi) are investigating conservative Republican senator Stephen Sachs, who has been having secret sexual encounters with his male interns, despite his publicly antigay agenda. The story is shut down, however, when the source clams up and Rowena's editor, a supporter of the senator, puts a stop to the story. The editor also insists she take a vacation and will not take no for an answer.

While walking home, Rowena meets her childhood friend, Grace Clayton (Nicki Aycox), who seeks her help in taking down Harrison Hill (Willis), a wealthy advertising executive. Grace gives Rowena her e-mails as proof of their extramarital affair, which Hill recently ended.

A few days later, Grace is found dead, drowned and poisoned with belladonna, leading Rowena to suspect Harrison. Grace was revealed to be in her first trimester of pregnancy. With Miles' help, Rowena goes undercover, under the alias of Katherine Pogue, as a temporary worker at his company, H2A at 7 World Trade Center. While setting up gift bags for a Victoria's Secret collection launch, she meets fellow worker Gina. Gina gives her information about the questionable lifestyles of the senior management of H2A. Hill is revealed to be rich because of his wife, Mia Reinhart-Hill. If she divorced him, he would be penniless, revealing the reason why he keeps his affairs with female workers secret. Rowena flirts with Hill both online and in real life (not realizing the online Hill is actually Miles), but is warned to stay away by Hill's lesbian PA, Josie. When Hill catches her snooping, believing her to be a corporate spy, he fires her.

At Miles's apartment, Rowena discovers a shrine to her and explicit pictures of Miles and Grace. Miles arrives home and Rowena confronts him; he defends himself by providing evidence that Hill had access to belladonna for poisoning. She goes to the police, who arrest Harrison for the murder of Grace.

After Hill's conviction, Miles visits Rowena. He then tells her that he knows she is the real killer and has been using this investigation to frame Hill. Rowena flashes back to a memory of her father attempting to molest her, and her mother subsequently bludgeoning him to death with a fireplace poker. A younger Grace watches from her window as they bury his body. Grace has been blackmailing Rowena with this knowledge. Miles describes in detail how she had plotted the murder to end Grace's blackmail and pinned the murder on Hill. Miles asks how she intends to keep him quiet, implying she might sleep with him, since he has long lusted after her. However, Rowena stabs him to death and ransacks the kitchen. She then calls the police, claiming to have been attacked by Miles and that he might have been the real murderer. The film ends with a man looking out of a neighboring window, presumably having witnessed what really happened.

Cast

Production

Some of the scenes were filmed in the lobby of the new 7 World Trade Center, before its opening in March 2006.

Reception

Perfect Stranger was critically panned, with an 11% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 138 reviews.

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said, "Foley fights a losing battle with Perfect Stranger, a dull, dumb and unforgivably dated thriller, free of thrills and any kind of perfection, save a genius for product placement. Halle Berry and Bruce Willis, forced to compete with blatant plugs for Reebok, Heineken and Victoria's Secret, understandably give up all attempts at acting. Foley merely poses them like spears of prize broccoli. Berry plays a reporter trying to pin a murder on a married ad exec. You guessed it, Willis plays the rich horndog with a jealous wife and a jones for finding fresh meat on Internet chat rooms. That's right, it's a techno thriller that treats the already cliché topic of Web abuse with an idiotic sense of discovery. I won't go on, but the movie does with droning predictability."

Home media

Perfect Stranger was released on August 21, 2007 on DVD and Blu-ray Disc.

Promotion

The characters of Grace, Josie, and Mrs. Hill all have blogs dating back to September or October 2006 with YouTube videos of the respective actresses, in character, speaking the text of the entry with minor changes. This was a relatively new form of viral marketing similar to an alternate reality game.