Six months after her mother’s suicide, Leah Garrison still hasn’t recovered.  She’s developed agoraphobia that results in horrific hallucinations whenever she steps foot outside her family’s home and she’s on medication for her severe depression.  Like her late mother, Leah is also an artist, and she finds some catharsis working on her latest graphic novel.  Except the villain in her graphic novel, the Dark Stranger, begins haunting her outside of the novel.  Leah must overcome her psychosis and the Dark Stranger before they both destroy her.

It’s both the film’s greatest strength and hindrance that Leah is set up as an unreliable narrator from the beginning.  Establishing her as emotionally and mentally unstable from the beginning, we learn not to trust what she’s seeing.  This renders the early jump scares as ineffective.  Not only because some of the digital effects don’t quite hit their mark but because they seem more harmless manifestations of Leah’s mental illness.  There’s no actual sense of danger.  However, it’s precisely because she’s an unreliable narrator that the latter half of the film works.  It becomes a psychological guessing game whether Leah is up against internal or external forces.

Katie Findlay, known for popular television roles on The Killing or How to Get Away with Murder, carries much of the film as lead Leah Garrison.  While she conveys guilt and depression with serviceable measure, ultimately Findlay proves she may not quite be ready for leading lady status.  With the narrative beginning already in the midst of Leah’s psychosis, both the screenplay and Findlay fail to develop Leah into a character beyond the sum of her mental maladies.  Without any nuances or layers to make her feel like a fleshed out character, Leah’s journey to recovery lacks the emotional punch necessary to fully invest in her story.

It’s actually Enrico Colantoni as Leah’s struggling father that resonates.  As an art teacher trying to hold his family together after a tragedy, his patience and warmth elicits more audience loyalty than Leah’s stubborn anger and frustration.  It’s a testament to Colantoni’s talent and experience, though, as he gives more depth to his character despite being relegated to a smaller supporting role. The brilliance of Stephen McHattie, however, is completely wasted.  While he essentially plays dual roles, both are far too brief and underutilized.  As Randall Toth, the curator interested in the Garrisons’ artwork, he shows up long enough to deliver crucial exposition before departing.  This is a shame considering he’s never firmly established as someone in which Leah should have such bitter distrust.

The animation sequences of Leah’s graphic novel stand out as the clear highlight of the film, lending a dark bedtime story feel to the narrative.  The art design is beautiful, and it’s a very clever way of propelling Leah’s journey forward. The blood effects, both digital and practical, prove puzzling.  The digital effects don’t quite look effective, but the practical blood effects are haphazardly applied.  The Dark Stranger himself looks ashen and washed out; though I’m sure the intent was to make the character look as though he belonged in a comic.  It’s the rare instance where the digital effects surpassed the practical effects by far.

At its core, The Dark Stranger poses some interesting questions about psychosis and art as a means of healing.  Using Leah’s psychosis to give the story ambiguity was brilliant. However, it’s hard to really care about Leah’s fate.  The Dark Stranger never has a strong enough presence to feel that sense of danger, and Findlay never elevates Leah into someone we want to root for.