DIRECTOR: Yeo Siew Hua
STARRING: Wu Chien-Ho, Lee Kang-sheng, Anicca Panna, Vera Chen, Pete Teo
RUNNING TIME: 2 hrs 6 minutes
LANGUAGE: Chinese, English
PLOT: After the mysterious disappearance of their infant daughter, a young couple begins receiving unsettling videos that reveal someone has been secretly recording their daily lives, even their most private moments. As the police install surveillance around their home to trap the voyeur, the couple’s fragile world begins to collapse, exposing hidden tensions and secrets under the unrelenting gaze of those watching from every direction.
GENRE: Drama
FILMING LOCATION: Singapore
To check out all previous submissions for Singapore, click HERE.
STARRING: Wu Chien-Ho, Lee Kang-sheng, Anicca Panna, Vera Chen, Pete Teo
RUNNING TIME: 2 hrs 6 minutes
LANGUAGE: Chinese, English
PLOT: After the mysterious disappearance of their infant daughter, a young couple begins receiving unsettling videos that reveal someone has been secretly recording their daily lives, even their most private moments. As the police install surveillance around their home to trap the voyeur, the couple’s fragile world begins to collapse, exposing hidden tensions and secrets under the unrelenting gaze of those watching from every direction.
GENRE: Drama
FILMING LOCATION: Singapore
To check out all previous submissions for Singapore, click HERE.
FILM REVIEW:
(This review contains spoilers.)
“You just have to watch someone close enough and keep your eyes on him."
Yeo Siew Hua’s Stranger Eyes unfolds as both a mystery and a philosophical mirror, reflecting how modern surveillance culture seeps into private spaces and inner lives. The film begins with the abrupt disappearance of a couple’s infant daughter, but rather than following the conventions of a thriller, Yeo approaches the story as a slow, disquieting descent into paranoia. As the parents receive disturbing videos showing that someone has been secretly filming them, even in their most intimate moments, the boundary between victim and observer begins to dissolve. What might have been a straightforward crime narrative becomes a haunting study of perception and the impossibility of privacy in an age of constant visibility.
The film’s visual language is strikingly composed, balancing the sterile precision of digital surveillance with moments of emotional fragility. Yeo, whose earlier work A Land Imagined also blurred the lines between dream and reality, continues to use visual fragmentation to reveal psychological disorientation. The camera often lingers uncomfortably, creating a sense that the audience itself has become complicit in the act of watching. The sound design heightens this unease, distant echoes, mechanical hums, and muffled voices, suggesting that observation itself has become the film’s true antagonist. Lee Kang-sheng’s presence as the enigmatic voyeur adds another layer of complexity; he is less a villain than a living ghost of loneliness, reflecting a society that records but no longer connects.
Stranger Eyes resists easy closure. The police investigation into the voyeur becomes secondary to the emotional breakdown of the family, particularly the father, whose inability to confront his own detachment parallels the larger theme of societal disconnection. The couple’s home, filled with cameras meant to protect them, transforms into a psychological cage. In this environment, the act of looking, by the voyeur, by the police, by the audience, becomes a form of violence. The film’s fragmented storytelling leaves viewers suspended between empathy and discomfort, unsure whether they are witnesses or participants in the couple’s unraveling.
Ultimately, Yeo’s film is not about solving a mystery but about exposing the hollow intimacy of modern life. Stranger Eyes argues that in a world obsessed with observation, true attention has become a rare and radical act. Beneath its sleek, unsettling surface lies a deep yearning for connection, a recognition that being seen is not the same as being understood. The endless cycle of cameras, screens, and recordings mirrors the emotional void that haunts the characters, who mistake surveillance for care and visibility for love. Yeo transforms this technological anxiety into something profoundly human: the desire to be known, even when words fail. The film’s final moments suggest that redemption lies not in reclaiming privacy but in rediscovering authenticity, in learning to look at one another without fear, without distance, and without the need to document every gesture. Stranger Eyes ends, therefore, not as a thriller resolved, but as a quiet revelation about how easily we lose ourselves in the act of watching, and how urgently we must relearn what it means to truly see.
(This review contains spoilers.)
“You just have to watch someone close enough and keep your eyes on him."
Yeo Siew Hua’s Stranger Eyes unfolds as both a mystery and a philosophical mirror, reflecting how modern surveillance culture seeps into private spaces and inner lives. The film begins with the abrupt disappearance of a couple’s infant daughter, but rather than following the conventions of a thriller, Yeo approaches the story as a slow, disquieting descent into paranoia. As the parents receive disturbing videos showing that someone has been secretly filming them, even in their most intimate moments, the boundary between victim and observer begins to dissolve. What might have been a straightforward crime narrative becomes a haunting study of perception and the impossibility of privacy in an age of constant visibility.
The film’s visual language is strikingly composed, balancing the sterile precision of digital surveillance with moments of emotional fragility. Yeo, whose earlier work A Land Imagined also blurred the lines between dream and reality, continues to use visual fragmentation to reveal psychological disorientation. The camera often lingers uncomfortably, creating a sense that the audience itself has become complicit in the act of watching. The sound design heightens this unease, distant echoes, mechanical hums, and muffled voices, suggesting that observation itself has become the film’s true antagonist. Lee Kang-sheng’s presence as the enigmatic voyeur adds another layer of complexity; he is less a villain than a living ghost of loneliness, reflecting a society that records but no longer connects.
Stranger Eyes resists easy closure. The police investigation into the voyeur becomes secondary to the emotional breakdown of the family, particularly the father, whose inability to confront his own detachment parallels the larger theme of societal disconnection. The couple’s home, filled with cameras meant to protect them, transforms into a psychological cage. In this environment, the act of looking, by the voyeur, by the police, by the audience, becomes a form of violence. The film’s fragmented storytelling leaves viewers suspended between empathy and discomfort, unsure whether they are witnesses or participants in the couple’s unraveling.
Ultimately, Yeo’s film is not about solving a mystery but about exposing the hollow intimacy of modern life. Stranger Eyes argues that in a world obsessed with observation, true attention has become a rare and radical act. Beneath its sleek, unsettling surface lies a deep yearning for connection, a recognition that being seen is not the same as being understood. The endless cycle of cameras, screens, and recordings mirrors the emotional void that haunts the characters, who mistake surveillance for care and visibility for love. Yeo transforms this technological anxiety into something profoundly human: the desire to be known, even when words fail. The film’s final moments suggest that redemption lies not in reclaiming privacy but in rediscovering authenticity, in learning to look at one another without fear, without distance, and without the need to document every gesture. Stranger Eyes ends, therefore, not as a thriller resolved, but as a quiet revelation about how easily we lose ourselves in the act of watching, and how urgently we must relearn what it means to truly see.
