Reynolds gets his hold on the audience from the very outset and never lets up. The first twenty minutes of When Strangers Appear grip absolutely. One is kept in complete suspense over the appearance of Barry Watson as Radha Mitchell opens the diner, followed by the arrival of the three strangers and his sudden vanishing in mid-meal, the disappearance of the butcher’s knife, the cutting of the phone cord, and she finding him hiding whispering that they are after him, which is contrasted with them asking whose car is parked outside and it becoming clear that it is not his. Reynolds drives the film with these intensively sustained set-pieces. There are times the entire film can hang in a single moment of doubt that Reynolds creates around almost every character and anything they say at any one time. The suspense sequences generated – Radha Mitchell’s venture into the three’s hotel room as they return, her necessary reliance on a sinister local cop who may or may not have also forced himself on her – is excellent. The climax that When Strangers Appear arrives at is kinetically intensive.