I thought the trailer for this looked interesting. But sometimes there's a reason why you haven't heard much about a movie.In the case of When Strangers Appear, it was possibly because you could drive a fair-size SUV through the holes in the plot. In fact the likable leads, sassy tough-girl waitress Radha Mitchell and blow-in weakling waif Barry Watson do well to steer clear of the yawning chasms multiplying around them as the film progresses.Watson's broke and a bit broken but it still takes him a while to awaken Mitchell's protective instincts. When a gang of bad boys turn up at the diner and prove demanding customers, does she believe the cute guy with the greasy hair who claims they're out to get him? Or is he a little unhinged, paranoid and prone to making up stories?At first promisingly intriguing, Mitchell's dilemma holds the attention as you try to work out with her whom she can trust, if anyone. Affairs are complicated by the fact that the put-upon heroine in the one-horse town has fallen foul of the local police representative in the past so is wary of turning to him for help.With circumstances conspiring to isolate her, your sympathies are all with the actress, who's probably wishing she'd exercised more of her character's natural suspicion when offered the part in the first place.It's a watchable enough psychological thriller that passes the time admirably until you start to think about it a bit and ask yourself those niggling 'why' questions. You know, 'But hey, why didn't they …?' Or 'Wait a minute though, why didn't he …?' Then everything falls apart … It's a shame though because, with a little extra effort, it could have been a contender.

"When Strangers Appear" (2001) is just the sort of film I'm a sucker for. It's a tense, neo-Hitchcockian thriller with a crisp, clean visual style, a forceful sense of place, several great suspense sequences, very effective camera work, and one hell of a paranoid mood. The story concerns a young woman who for 48 hours becomes entangled in a mysterious manhunt when her path crosses with the wrong people on the Oregon coast. Or, as I really like to tell folks, it's about a waitress being chased by diabolical surfers.The film was written and directed by New Zealand director Scott Reynolds. For me his first film, "The Ugly," was close to unwatchable, but then he released "Heaven," which showed a lot of promise. (And with any luck he'll break his 6-year dry spell and bring us something else soon.) Radha Mitchell and Josh Lucas are both very, very good in "When Strangers Appear," as is Kevin Anderson in his supporting role. The film has a few flaws, however. This includes a few too-self-conscious moments and the casting of Barry Watson as Jack, the man on the run. Still, the film is a must-see for fans of tense contemporary thrillers that lie in the shadow of Hitch, or for anyone who's up for the sort of gripping, old-fashioned good time provided by films like "Red Rock West," "Nick of Time," and "Breakdown."

Wow...I tell you what I really liked this movie when i saw it. I was sitting home watching lifetime and this happened to come on. I was so enthralled by this movie i couldn't turn away from it. I love Josh Lucas in this movie. I had always been a huge fan of him, like it Sweet Home Alabama. But in this movie you got to see him act in a different way, he actually got to take on a darker roll. I didn't think that it would work but it totally did! This movie was full of twists and turns. Reading the other comments everyone says that they didn't like the ending but i thought that the ending was pretty good. How they made it switch on and on from person to person. It was a little bit hard to follow but in the end it made it all that much more worth it. I would definitely recommend this movie!

He claims that it was road rage and then they stabbed him. They claim something else. The fact remains that this is one big muddled mess of a movie.The stabbed guy comes into a diner and recounts his story. The worker is actually the owner. At night, she runs to a broken down motel that her father left her. She is ready to run from all this. She should have.If this isn't enough to take, it seems that the sheriff molested her and nobody believes her. His screaming wife comes to condemn her. Later on, she comes with their child to apologize-the guy was fooling around with someone else.The woman gets the guy to a doctor to clean out the stab wound. In the interim, the doctor is deadly shortly afterwards. Both the guys and the stab victim blame each other.The dialogue is as inane as the whole movie. We have such brilliant lines as one of the gang saying to the girl: "Go smoke cigarettes. By the time I return, you'll have finished a half a pack." The American Cancer Society should also condemn the whole thing.Anyway, we have an explosion at a gasoline station and the electrocution of the original stab victim.Stay away from strangers.