Annual Top Films Lists

Top 100 Most Anticipated American Indie Films of 2018: #97. Justin Kelly’s Welcome the Stranger

Published on January 14, 2018

Welcome the Stranger

Currently sitting on a pair of feature film items waiting for a film festival release, filmmaker Justin Kelly had his feature debut I Am Michael (review) break into the 2015 edition of the Sundance Film Festival and quickly followed that up with 2016’s King Cobra. JT Leroy is easily on several folks wish list, but it’s this misfit item with Caleb Landry Jones and Riley Keough in Welcome the Stranger that have we think might be a fun side dish of noir.

Alice (Abbey Lee) arrives unannounced at her estranged brother Ethan’s house in an attempt to reconcile, but bizarre visions, the return of his strange girlfriend (Riley Keough) and Alice’s paranoia and suspicion force the siblings to cling onto reality amidst mysterious circumstances. Production began back in July of 2016 in Kingston, New York and as we previously mentioned in our predictions piece for Sundance, this counts as Keough’s first producer credit. This might be one of our favorite guilty pleasures for this new year.

Release Date/Prediction: Back in 2016, the Tribeca Film Festival premiered King Cobra, so we’re thinking this will be the lieu for Welcome the Stranger.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).