The Stranger

 Don't take my word for this, but I don't think this movie is based on that French book famed driver Jean Girard famously read during his NASCAR races.
 It's also not the 2014 Chilean horror film I was originally searching for, nor the well-regarded Joel Edgerton crime movie that came... ouch, in 2022, just like this one. That's got to suck for discoverability. No, this one's a British no-budget horror film from writer/director team Mike Clarke and Paul Gerrard.

 I'd love to say I enjoyed it more than I did, but it's a film that struggles a bit too much with its limitations to be really effective; The situation that it sets up - of a supernatural pack of hunters that chase and kill whoever catches their fancy, and then go after anyone else he may have come in contact with - is a cool one, but not a lot is done with it.

 It starts with an unrelated event (after a short prelude): the killing of one Greg (Jake Francis), loving husband and father, during a robbery. His wife Amanda (Jennifer Preston) decides to pack everything up and move to the countryside to run a bed and breakfast with her daughter Karli (Isabella Percival) - who, of course, doesn't take to being pulled out of Uni very well.

 Enter the stranger, Kyle (Damien Ashley). We'd seen him before, in a weird scene during the prelude where he basically explains the premise of the movie to his mom. Here he charms Karli into letting him stay the night even though the B&B isn't open yet, and then starts playing stupid mind games to drive a wedge between her and her mother - kind of like Dan Stevens in The Guest, but here the mindfuckery doesn't serve much of a purpose, just to add some artificial tension during a long stretch of movie where nothing much happens.
 That is, until Kyle pulls out a gun and holds the women hostage. He explains that the hunters are outside, but they won't come in unless they know for sure he's in there. So he has to hole up until dawn, and he needs the women not to give his presence away.

 This is the sort of film you grade on a curve, as its lack of appropriate funding is so clear that it feels wrong to slam it for that. It does avoid the pitfall of feeling like uninspired hackwork in the same way that, to take a recent example, Hellblazers does. But it's still pretty rough.
 Even at seventy-nine minutes, it drags a bit, struggling to fill out its runtime. There are a lot of dark scenes - have in mind that I don't really mind this sort of thing and don't usually complain about them - that are only worsened by the digital cinematography, and most of the action is... well, a bit amateurish.

 On the plus side there are a couple of oddball glitches that I really appreciated. One is a dramatic scene that for some reason is scored with horror music, and the other is a whole scene where it's supposed to be raining - the characters mention it, the character is supposed to be soaking wet... but... there's no rain. Not a drop. I can only imagine they had some problem with the rain machine and said fuck it, let's do it as scripted anyway. I really respect that.
 Finally there are a few short interstitial shots of chitinous limbs - beetle legs and the like - interspersed throughout the movie, scored with ominous music, which I guess are there to remind us something weird is going on? The bad guys aren't particularly insectile.

 The script has a lot of padding and some of the developments and character interactions are less than convincing, but the characters themselves are all right (except for Kyle and his bargain-bin manipulations); They're likeable enough. The actors are all game and do a pretty good job.
 The film also won me over slightly with the things it does spend money on; Greg's death is due to an excellent, very bloody slashed throat, and later on there's a really cool alien mask and some good makeup. There's some good use of a creepy darkened bus depot in a tense scene that isn't ever really tied to the rest of the movie satisfactorily.

 The bad guys are just people in full bodysuits and masks - they often look silly, but also get a really effective scene where Karli needs to walk through a hallway full of them.
 I also like that the movie maintains a sense of mystery. There's very little backstory, the menace is just... well, some sort of supernatural menace that likes fucking with its prey. And that's enough, that's all we need.

 So no, I wouldn't really recommend this one, nor would I consider it a good film, but it is interesting - I don't regret watching it. And I'd definitely have a look at what these folks come up with if given more money.