20 years after Shinya Tsukamoto's "A Snake of June", this is Asuka Kurosawa's triumphant return to the big screen. A cultural milestone in Japan, "Intimate Stranger" is a disturbing psychological chiller about a single mother’s search for her missing son. Award-winning documentarian Mayu Nakamura has defied the tacit ban on depicting a sensual 40-something female protagonist, and shines a light on the country’s “overly clingy” mother-son relationships. Reminiscent of J-horror in its bleak color palette, skin-crawling sense of claustrophobia and odd set design, the film follows Megumi as she meets Yuji, who claims to know the whereabouts of her son. A strange bond develops between the two broken souls as they attempt to extract secrets from each other, while the roles of predator and prey unexpectedly switch.