STRANGER EYES: Who’s Watching Who?

The ubiquity of smartphones and social media in modern culture means that almost anyone can record a video and post it online to be viewed by anyone with an internet connection. Our lives are lived largely in public, a sacrifice we have made as a society for the sake of being able to access information and communicate with others anywhere at any time. However, choosing to make aspects of your own life visible to total strangers online is one thing; discovering that aspects of your life have been made visible to others without your knowledge—recorded surreptitiously and watched without your consent—is another thing altogether.

Such is the premise of Stranger Eyes, the latest feature from writer-director Yeo Siew Hua (A Land Imagined). The film follows a young couple in Singapore looking for their missing child; when DVD recordings of their daily lives begin showing up on their doorstep, they begin to suspect that this mysterious voyeur may be the one responsible for the kidnapping. It’s a film that has a lot to say about the blurry line between surveillance and voyeurism, and whether or not our capacity to connect in real life has been ruined by our reliance on virtual spaces; indeed, it has almost too much to say, and as a result, feels muddled and unsatisfying.

Every Breath You Take

Young dad Junyang (Wu Chien-Ho) and mom Peiying (Anicca Panna) live in an apartment in Singapore with Junyang’s mom, Shuping (Vera Chen), and their toddler daughter, Little Bo (Anya Chow). The family is in shambles following the kidnapping of Little Bo at the local playground; months have gone by with Peiying obsessively revisiting family videos for clues and Shuping doggedly canvassing the playground with flyers, but Little Bo still has not been found.

One day, a DVD arrives at the apartment containing footage of Junyang following a woman and her child through a shopping mall. Then, more and more DVDs appear, each one containing increasingly intimate footage of the family’s daily lives. As the police step up surveillance of the apartment to try and catch the voyeur—increasing the number of eyes on all sides—we see how supermarket manager Lao Wu (Lee Kang-Sheng), who lives in an apartment across the way with his elderly mother, has become engrossed in the young couple’s lives, though his reasons for being so emotionally invested in Jungyang and Peiying aren’t clear until the film’s final act.

At first, Lao Wu’s acts of voyeurism are almost accidental and mostly harmless, but soon, they become invasive. He watches (and records) as Jungyang commits adultery to satisfy sexual urges he cannot give voice to, and leaves supportive comments as Peiying livestreams DJ sets from the apartment to chase dreams abandoned with motherhood. When the voyeur’s identity is revealed, Jungyang begins obsessively watching Lao Wu in turn, hoping he’ll reveal the whereabouts of Little Bo; instead, the two men grow more and more alike, picking up each other’s habits as the line between watcher and watched begins to dissolve.

Watching the Detectives

Stranger Eyes isn’t shy about reminding the audience of its central themes, almost to a fault. In the opening scenes, I nearly groaned out loud to see Peiying wearing a shirt with a set of eyes on it, emblazoned with the words “I’m Watching You.” As the DVDs start appearing, Junyang grows increasingly paranoid and starts noticing cameras everywhere—a commentary on Singapore’s culture of intense surveillance, to be sure, but after a while, the audience doesn’t need to see yet another close-up of a security camera to get the point.

Still, if the film is trying to tell us that this culture of surveillance is unhealthy, and our utter lack of privacy is making us too paranoid, then why are the police, with their unlimited access to camera footage from all over the city, the only ones capable of finding Little Bo? And if security cameras are so ever-present, why were there seemingly none at the playground where Little Bo was taken? If there were, it feels as though the case could have been solved in mere days, rather than months; perhaps then Stranger Eyes could have been a solid, succinct thriller instead of an unwieldy, excessively long domestic drama. The film’s attempt at a slow burn of a story with lots of twists and turns instead feels unfortunately sluggish, with only composer Thomas Foguenne’s propulsive, percussive soundtrack keeping the pace from completely stalling.

If there is any reason to watch Stranger Eyes, it is to see one of the best performances from one of contemporary cinema’s greatest actors. Lee Kang-Sheng’s decades of work with the king of slow cinema himself, Tsai Ming-Liang, have made him almost unparalleled in conveying complex emotions without saying a word; a master of subtle body language, he can sit on a park bench in silence, barely moving, and somehow still hold your attention. Because of his finely tuned performance, Lao Wu is by far the most engaging character in the movie, someone who forces us to consider our own acts of voyeurism and the ways we allow screens to mediate our interactions with the rest of the world. We may seem more connected, but in many ways, we are also more isolated than we’ve ever been.

Conclusion

Despite tackling intriguing and timely concepts about the role of technology and surveillance in modern society, Stranger Eyes ends up being a surprisingly dull watch—especially when Lee Kang-Sheng isn’t on screen.

Stranger Eyes opens in theaters in the U.S. on August 29, 2025.