Drama, drama, drama. That’s the most accurate description of The Stranger in My Home. The psychological thriller sees Sophia Bush play Ali Mitchell, a mother whose life gets turned upside down when Tom Truby (Chris Carmack) appears on her doorstep and tells her that he’s her teenage daughter Katie’s (Amiah Miller) real father after a baby mix-up at the hospital.
Sophia Bush and Chris Carmack were attracted to their characters for different reasons
For Bush, she welcomed the opportunity to dive into such a juicy and drama-filled role as Ali. “I absolutely loved it,” she said. “From the moment I read the script, I was excited about it, and then being able to dive into the source material – the best-selling novel by Adele Parks – and really see how rich the story is for every single character.”
In addition to this, Bush appreciated the fact that the Jeff Fisher-directed movie touches upon different genres as the story progresses. “It was so exciting to start in a family drama, press into a thriller, and then be able to nod to some really classic horror genre moments by the end of the movie,” she said.
The genre jumps work, largely thanks to Carmack’s turn as Tom, who might be a strong contender for the creep of the year in 2025. “What are you talking about?” Carmack joked. “Tom loves his family!”
While Carmack acknowledged Tom has many (many) flaws, he found a way to relate to such a complex character. “Tom’s reality is a little disassociated from everyone else’s, which gives you a lot of freedom as an actor to maybe respond to things that aren’t really even there sometimes,” he said. “But how I really hooked into the character – believe it or not – I’m a family man. I’ve got kids, and it’s love of family and the obsessive compulsion to hold on to that, and whatever you can, and to love your children. So, while what we see of him does not feel good intentioned, most of the time, my road in was to find what’s good about Tom. Find his redeeming qualities, even in this crazy descent that we experience together. So being able to play those two things at the same time was a really rich experience.”
The Stranger in My Home says something important about social media and communication
In The Stranger in My Home, many characters find out about each other through social media. By scrolling through other people’s feeds, they’re able to uncover information they might not have had access to in the first place. When asked about what they took away from the film’s message about social media, Sophia Bush said, “Yes, there’s that obvious glaring red light, especially where young people are concerned. Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation is incredible on the subject. One of the things that I think was really interesting, even to go a layer deeper than the obvious pitfalls, was that one of the ways we found a rhythm as our characters, as Ali and Tom together, was understanding that so much doesn’t necessarily translate in the world of social media.
“You often hear the adage that people don’t necessarily receive you as you are when you put something out into the world, they receive what you put out into the world from their perspective as they are. And that really enabled us to find a meeting point, because our characters are strangers. Then, in a moment, they are sharing the most intimate connection that two people could be, but they don’t know each other’s rhythms, communication styles.
“So, as things begin to kind of go sideways, where Ali might react in a certain way to Tom, it’s easy to go, ‘Well, no. He’s in this crazy scenario with me. We’re trauma bonding. This is so bizarre. No one knows what to say. He’s not being weird. Wait, is it me? Am I the one being weird?’ And it gives you that ability to second-guess yourself, which I think is part of what social media does to people, too. So, it was really neat for us to have a surface experience of the dangers, particularly for a family, and then the subconscious experience of how people know or don’t know how to communicate with each other anymore.”
Chris Carmack connected with this topic on a personal level. “I’m a father of two daughters, and one of my greatest fears is what they are going to experience online,” he said. “So, in terms of real-life horror and real-life fear as an audience, as a viewer, I connected with that on a very deep level. Then even further, some of the stylistic choices that Jeff [Fisher] made seem to reference social media. The way slides are swiping across the screen, and as Sophia noted, what you see is not necessarily what you get, I think that’s how people perform on social media most of the time too. It’s a distorted reality. In this film, many people are presenting themselves with a distorted reality.”
Carmack couldn’t help but point out how someone like Tom fits into the social media world. “Tom is like the comments section,” Carmack added, with a chuckle. “He’s like the scariest part.”
Starring Sophia Bush and Chris Carmack, The Stranger in My Home arrives on digital on June 24. Read our full review.
