‘The Stranger in My Home’ Turns Adele Parks’ Novel Into a Campy B-Movie
Sometimes what reads on the page as thrilling and suspenseful can come across as silly onscreen. That difficulty in adaptation plagues plenty of movies and TV shows based on popular mysteries and thrillers, and one of the solutions can be to change the tone from serious to campy.
It’s a tough balance to maintain, and for every successful example like director Paul Feig’s take on Darcey Bell’s A Simple Favor, there are plenty of others that fall flat. The new film based on Adele Parks’ 2016 novel The Stranger in My Home (available June 24 on VOD) isn’t nearly as outlandish as A Simple Favor, but it does feature a wry, self-aware sensibility that gives a knowing wink to the over-the-top twists.
Director Jeff Fisher and screenwriter Chris Sivertson previously teamed on the 2024 adaptation of Parks’ The Image of You, and they both have experience with genre kitsch. Fisher has helmed several slasher movies, while Sivertson directed the notorious Lindsay Lohan cult classic I Know Who Killed Me and has written multiple Lifetime movies, which share a lot in common with the plotting of The Stranger in My Home. At heart, it’s a story about a mother springing into action to protect her family, after her world has been rocked by devastating revelations.
Sophia Bush plays wealthy housewife Ali Mitchell, whose seemingly perfect life is shattered when she learns that her teenage daughter Katie (Amiah Miller) was switched at birth with another girl. That information comes courtesy of Tom Truby (Chris Carmack), a seemingly well-intentioned widower whose wife actually gave birth to Katie, while the Trubys ended up raising Ali’s biological daughter Liv (Grace Aiello Antczak).
The Mitchells take all of this information remarkably in stride, and they begin a friendly relationship with Tom, Liv, and Tom’s two other kids. But something is clearly amiss, and not only because the movie periodically cuts away to a mysterious hooded figure stalking the characters and preparing some sort of fortified lair. It takes a little while before the true danger emerges, but in the meantime The Stranger in My Home plays like a sped-up version of one of the ’00s teen soaps that Bush (One Tree Hill) and Carmack (The O.C.) are still best known for.
“I feel like every choice I’m making now is wrong,” Ali says, and that’s an accurate assessment of the actions of nearly every character in the movie, but their misguided decisions are part of what makes The Stranger in My Home such trashy fun. Slightly frustrated with her marriage to thriller novelist Jeff (Chris Johnson), Ali gets too close to the clearly creepy Tom, while 15-year-old Katie seems to be pursuing the 20-year-old landscaper who’s working at the family’s absurdly lavish house.
Other potential sources of danger include a pair of high school mean girls, a delightfully bitchy PTA busybody, and Katie’s uncomfortably hunky new sort-of-brother. The problematic flirtations only compound once various secrets are revealed. The actors dig into the sometimes ridiculous material, and Carmack especially has fun playing up Tom’s obvious instability.
No one would mistake The Stranger in My Home for a glossy, well-funded Netflix or HBO production, but Fisher and Sivertson know exactly what kind of movie they’re making. They use Parks’ twisty plotting and shady characters for an easily digestible piece of pop entertainment, with just enough self-deprecation to indicate that they’re on the same wavelength as the audience. Everyone is here for a pulpy, lurid piece of entertainment, and that’s exactly what they get.
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Josh Bell is a freelance writer and movie/TV critic based in Las Vegas. He has written about movies, TV, and pop culture for the Boston Globe, Vulture, Tom’s Guide, Inverse, Crooked Marquee, and more. With comedian Jason Harris, he co-hosts the podcast Awesome Movie Year.