When I teach budding screenwriters, I will often use the “show don’t tell” rule as a quick-fix for students trapped in the more familiar mode of literary storytelling. The Stranger, an accomplished Australian thriller, written and directed by Thomas M. Wright, abides closely to this adage with visceral storytelling using images and sounds, the material of cinema.
While the film is adapted from Kate Kyriacou’s The Sting, based on the Daniel Morcombe murder, it fictionalises the specifics and leaves the heinous crime off-screen.
