Perfect Strangers

Seven lifelong friends gather for dinner. There is an eclipse and the sky is red. One of them proposes a game: put the phones on the table, read every message aloud for the rest of the night, take every call on speaker. Nobody can refuse, because refusing means admitting you have something to hide. Within a few hours not one relationship at that table is what it was. Álex de la Iglesia directed. It is the Spanish adaptation of Paolo Genovese's Italian film Perfetti sconosciuti, released in 2016. The film being adapted holds a record of its own. According to Guinness World Records, Genovese's original is the most remade film ever: twenty-four versions in different languages as of January 2024. There is no English version on that list, because the rights were bought in 2017 by the Weinstein Company and production was suspended indefinitely when the company collapsed financially. The Spanish version did enormous business at home: over 20.7 million euros, the second most-seen film in Spain in 2017, and by February 2018 the tenth highest-grossing Spanish film of all time. Who it is for: viewers who like single-location thrillers that run on dialogue. Who it is not for: anyone who has seen the original. The adaptation keeps the order of scenes almost exactly and the surprises sit in the same places.