If you don’t like films that leave you sitting there wondering what the fuck is actually going on, The Stranger probably isn’t for you.

Co-directors Paul Gerrard and Mike Clarke clearly aren’t interested in making things easy. Their feature debut drops us into the familiar territory of the rural British thriller, then starts quietly pulling the floorboards out from underneath it.

Amanda and her teenage daughter Karli are trying to rebuild their lives after a home invasion ends in brutal violence. They escape the memories by moving out into the middle of nowhere, taking over an isolated countryside bed-and-breakfast. In theory, this is where they can finally feel safe.

Yeah. About that.

Kyle turns up at the door looking for somewhere to spend the night. Nothing particularly unusual about that. Except this bloke has the general demeanour of someone who absolutely should not be allowed inside your house.

His story doesn’t quite add up. His behaviour is increasingly unsettling. He refuses to leave, and what initially looks like a straightforward home-invasion situation starts becoming something much stranger.

Kyle claims that something is hunting him in the woods.

This is where The Stranger starts having a bit of fun with your expectations.

Because is Kyle a manipulative bastard who has deliberately inserted himself into the lives of a traumatised mother and daughter, playing some elaborate psychological game with them? Or is there genuinely something out there in the darkness?

The film doesn’t rush to give you an answer.

Thank fuck for that.

Gerrard and Clarke resist the temptation to have somebody explain exactly what’s happening every five minutes. Instead, they let the darkness, the performances, and the increasingly fucked-up situation do the work. The isolated setting helps enormously, because once you’re out there in the middle of nowhere, the idea of something being just beyond the house becomes considerably more uncomfortable.

The performances from the central cast are a big part of what keeps it working, particularly because so much of the film depends on uncertainty. You’re constantly reassessing what you’ve just seen and what you think you know about Kyle and the situation Amanda and Karli have found themselves trapped in.

That’s when the film decides it wasn’t enough of a brain fuck and it wants more.

The second half takes everything you’ve been building in your head and gives it a fairly hefty kick in the bollocks. I obviously won’t go into exactly what happens, because discovering that shift for yourself is a big part of the experience.

What I will say is that The Stranger understands something a lot of psychological thrillers seem to forget: sometimes the best way to make an audience uncomfortable is to simply refuse to tell them what’s real.

There are no constant jump scares desperately trying to keep you awake. There isn’t a bloke wandering around explaining the mythology to anyone who’ll listen. It’s a slow burn, and it wants you to sit in that uncertainty while things get progressively more fucked up.

By the time the ending arrives, you’re left with exactly the sort of questions a film like this should leave behind.

The Stranger is dark, tense, and properly unsettling, but more importantly, it trusts its audience. It gives you enough to keep you watching without spoon-feeding every answer, then lets your own imagination fill in the gaps.

And let’s be honest, that’s usually where the really nasty stuff lives anyway.

The Stranger is available on UK Digital now.