Perfect Stranger

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

To see Perfect Stranger is to wish for a more sophisticated vehicle for a film actress this good, but actors -- and audiences -- take what they can get. This is better than most.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Perfect Stranger is far from Hitchcock, and Berry, although she gets an A for effort, can't do much with the half-baked characterizations.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Todd Komarnicki's screenplay relies heavily on red herrings and a host of suspects (there are more murderers swanning around Hill's sleek offices than there were aboard the Orient Express) to keep audiences distracted from what, in retrospect, is really pretty obvious.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Cliched, mostly routine and never especially satisfying.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Instead of heightening the intrigue in this psychological thriller, the labored twists and out-of-leftfield turns will leave audiences more weary than wary.

Miami Herald Carla Meyer

A rarely suspenseful thriller with a twist ending of the worst kind: It takes too much explanation.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Think you'd be happy watching Berry do little more than look beautiful? Perfect Stranger gives you plenty of opportunity to find out.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Perfect Stranger is one of those movies that two years, or two months, from now, you won't recall having seen. Ostensibly a movie about big secrets, it comes up with few that are worth keeping, or telling.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

It is an acceptable enough thriller, neither the worst you've seen nor the opposite.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

It lacks the rutting nuttiness of "Basic Instinct," even as it recycles much of that film's kiss-or-kill premise.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The only surprise here is the real star of the show, who turns out to be not Halle Berry, not even Bruce Willis, but a flat computer screen in all its hard-driven glory.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

When the left-field ending finally arrives, it explains a lot, including why she's so off-putting and histrionic, but it never really explains why audiences should bother sitting through such a tangled mess.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Joins the growing list of blandly made erotic thrillers that contain no eroticism, few thrills and fewer likable characters.

Village Voice Scott Foundas

Perfect Stranger derives some novelty value from its colorblind casting and from being the most ludicrously silly Hollywood f----fest since the Willis-starring "Color of Night" (minus that movie's comic self-awareness). But as a thriller, it's so by-the-numbers that it's hardly worth keeping count.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

A movie so inane that it fails to rise to the level of "good trash."

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Perfect Stranger is the Egg MacGuffin of whodunits, a cheesy affair that casts so many baited lures that they tangle each other and don't hook you.

Austin Chronicle Steve Davis

The fishy smell that permeates Perfect Stranger comes from all of the red herrings flopping around this absurdly plotted Hollywood thriller.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Just another thriller, utterly disposable.

Variety John Anderson

A disorienting cocktail of illogic and hysteria that requires an 11th-hour soliloquy just to explain what's happened.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

The director, as he showed in movies like "After Dark, My Sweet," and "Fear," specializes in conjuring conspiratorial atmospheres in which anxiety and sexual menace hang in the air like a heavy, bitter perfume. Long after you've dismissed the movie's ridiculous, convoluted story, traces of that scent may linger.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

The star wattage quickly dims in this slick-looking but ringingly hollow affair that starts off generically at best before collapsing into a convoluted heap of shrill screen cliches.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Have you ever seen a movie without a single believable moment? Perfect Stranger, a convoluted and altogether risible thriller with Halle Berry and Bruce Willis, manages this difficult feat.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Superficial and lurid, Perfect Stranger is the cinematic equivalent of spam and should, like those trashy messages, be avoided.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

A crappy thriller gussied up with a chrome-plated veneer.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

A dull, dumb and unforgivably dated thriller, free of thrills and any kind of perfection.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

After "Gothika " and "Catwoman ," a viewer has to wonder: Why does this woman keep making thrillers if she can't bring herself to be thrilled?

Time Richard Schickel

The movie's central problem: a lack of alternative suspects...How the screenwriter, Todd Komarnicki, and the director, James Foley, resolve this problem is a genre travesty and an affront to their star.

Empire Dan Jolin

A twist-burdened techno-thriller that would be by-the-numbers if it could count.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

This stupidly contrived thriller is all the more disappointing if you admire previous work by Berry and director James Foley (After Dark, My Sweet).

Film Threat Michael Ferraro

Nothing but a perfect waste of a Friday night. Or a Tuesday night. Or any night of the week for that matter.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Life is full of choices, and Halle Berry has made another bad one with Perfect Stranger, a perfectly off-putting thriller.