‘Stranger Eyes’ Trailer: Siew Hua Yeo’s Venice Hit Is a Voyeuristic Surveillance Thriller

Exclusive: Lee Kang-sheng stars in the feature that has been compared to a Hitchcockian drama.

Siew Hua Yeo is looking at the surveillance thriller genre through a new lens. The writer/director has been compared to Michael Haneke and Alfred Hitchcock with his latest feature, “Stranger Eyes.” The film debuted at Venice 2024, where it was the first Singaporean film ever to compete for the Golden Lion.

The synopsis reads: “After enduring months of a fruitless police investigation into the disappearance of their daughter, a young, estranged couple, Junyang (Wu Chien-Ho) and Peiying (Anicca Panna), realize they are being filmed surreptitiously when they begin receiving mysterious packages at their door containing DVDs with footage of their daily lives. The moments captured are unnerving not only for the violation of their privacy, but for what is exposed about Junyang and Peiying’s relationship on a most intimate level. Suspecting their voyeur is responsible for taking their daughter, the couple embark on a desperate mission to seek him out, only to find the truth of his identity is more complicated than it seems.” Legendary Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-sheng, Oulaya Amamra, and Damien Rebattel also star.

Filmmaker Yeo told IndieWire, “I’m really happy that the film is having its release in North America and thrilled to share our film about how we look at each other in these unprecedented times of seeing and being seen.”

The IndieWire review cited the cinematic references to “Rear Window” and “Cache,” with the critic Sophie Monks Kaufman writing, “Where so many directors fall back on the clumsy and dutiful inclusion of technology in their films, Yeo succeeds at crafting an original vision, building a film that is part-man, part machine. Some of his best sequences patiently let a digital feed play out and then show us the person watching behind a screen. Peiying livestreams a DJ set where she is dressed as a rave Santa beheld, of course, by a stalker who watches her both through the livestream and through a window. There is never any collapsing into conventional emotional displays. Peiying does not freak out as the stalker texts her, accepting his gaze as a more intense variation of the one she is enabling through her livestream.”

“Stranger Eyes” is produced by Fran Borgia, Stefano Centini, Jean-Laurent Csindis, and Alex C. Lo, with Nicola Brigaud-Robert, Glen Goei, and Bee Thiam Tan executive producing. The cinematography is by Hideho Urata.

Film Movement will debut “Stranger Eyes” at Film at Lincoln Center August 29. Check out the trailer below.