The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Stalkers are a subset of Psychos and Serial Killers. Whereas a serial killer will kill a variety of people, a stalker will fixate on one individual often regarding them as their love or best friend.
On screen, stalkers will come into the lives of their target and present an initial charm – they can appear as a friend, someone who professes love, or as hired help – before they are spurned in some way. They then turn malicious and disrupt their target’s life – befriend those around them, inveigle their workplace and the like. They are malevolently persistent individuals and will gaslight, invade the homes and eventually imprison and/or try to kill the object of their obsession.
There have been assorted stalker films beginning with Clint Eastwood’s Play Misty for Me (1971). The first major cluster of stalker films came with the popular hit of Fatal Attraction (1987) where Glenn Close becomes obsessed with married Michael Douglas after a casual fling. The popularity of this led to a number of copies. Since then, variations on the stalker theme have become the regular grist of cable Psycho-Thrillers.
Modest and effective horror anthology from the two brothers responsible for Pitch Black and the Ewoks tv movies. Featuring a quarter of stories, all of them are strong efforts generating a more than reasonable degree of tension throughout
A standout French-made stalker film that leaves Fatal Attraction in its dust. Isabelle Carré giving a frightening performance as a woman who becomes obsessed with a doctor
A formulaic copy of Fatal Attraction. The difference here is that the sexes have been reversed and the key parts cast with African-American actors
From the Golden Age of TV Movies, a film where Scott Jacoby hides in the cubbyhole of the wall of his home after he accidentally kills someone and then develops a fixation on the family that move in
A cougar version of Fatal Attraction with Jennifer Lopez stalked by a teenage boy. On every level this invites ridicule, from J-Lo sleepwalking through her performance to a director who has never made a good film to a script detached from human psychology
Jaimie Alexander has an affair with barman Wes Bentley whereafter he stalks her and throws her wedding plans awry. Wes Bentley plays with a darkly magnetic intensity but the film slides into the tamely PG-rated Fatal Attraction cliches
Ben Stiller directed comedy with Jim Carrey playing a stalkerish cable installer who makes Matthew Broderick’s life a misery. Carrey’s fans didn’t seem to want to see him play psycho and this was his only flop of this period
Adaptation of a John Fowles novel where shy Terence Stamp makes Samantha Eggar a prisoner so she can love him. Made not long after Psycho, this tries similar but becomes more of an Odd Couple comedy
TV mini-series remake of the Michael Crichton medical thriller that pointlessly changes and over-extrudes a tight and effective original, while director Mikael Salomon adds absurd red herrings and keys away major surprises well in advance
At the outset, this seems to be either a routine stalker or a clairvoyance film. On the other hand, it is driven by an undeniable WTF component and definitely arrives at bizarrely left field explanation
An improvisational project shot between actor Mark Duplass and friend Patrick Brice, a two person handheld-shot film where videographer Brice is hired by an over-friendly Duplass who becomes increasingly disturbed
A copy of Fatal Attraction where Cary Elwes rents a room from a family only to find himself dealing with a psychopathic underage Alicia Silverstone determined to seduce/wreak vengeance
A mind-bogglingly meta film that starts out as a regular crime thriller before it gets invaded and taken over by psycho fan Penn Jillette who abducts the star and is determined to write himself in as the hero
Blumhouse film where a Westernised Indian girl rejects her traditional mother’s fears about her new boyfriend being a bad man reincarnated only for them to come true
A dense, visually afire film from the great Tony Scott starring Robert De Niro as a sports fan who snaps from the pressures of ordinary life and then stalks baseball star Wesley Snipes
A film made not long after the John Lennon shooting with Lauren Bacall as a Hollywood star stalked by fan Michael Biehn who snaps and turns psycho after a perceived rejection
Robin Hardy, director of The Wicker Man, makes an Irish-set thriller in which a country girl moved to the city is stalked by a serial killer who sends his victims poetry
Classic and highly influential psycho-thriller with Glenn Close as a deranged woman who stalks married man Michael Douglas after he has a fling with her. The film’s stature has been overstated and beneath the surface it holds a very conservative outlook on gender politics
Blumhouse thriller about an old school friend who inserts himself into the lives of a successful couple and proceeds to stalk them. This produces several effective twists but ultimately feels too mannered
Slasher film that comes with the interestingly original setting of a college dorm webcam porn site. Unfortunately, the film takes an awfully safe and tasteful route in delivering it
Imagine a version of Fatal Attraction where the Glenn Close character is the protagonist, this also has an unnerving Repulsion-like quality where what we think is happening keeps blurring and shifting
Director Neil Jordan delves into the psycho-thriller with Chloe Grace Mortez being stalked by over-friendly senior Isabelle Huppert. Jordan makes an often contrived script into a gripping ride
Film about a high-school stalker from Chris Sivertson, who breathes life into the cliches and has good central performances on hand to make the familiar plot seem fresh
A bland tv movie thriller in which a blinded woman Elisabeth Röhm finds that her homecare aid is an obsessive stalker who has fixated on her
Blumhouse deliver an invisible man, although one that has nothing to do with H.G. Wells or the previous invisible man films. Indeed, this feels like an invisible man film that doesn’t even want to be about an invisible man at all.
A psycho-thriller in the vein of Fatal Attraction with Kari Wuhrer stalking best friend Farrah Forke insisting they are meant to be together as a lesbian couple
A tawdry erotic thriller where designer Diane Lane creates a series of sexually provocative window dressings only for her to then become targeted by a psycho stalker
This was made guerrilla-style during the Cannes festival with many scenes shot at press conferences and premieres as obsessed fan Joe Spinell stalks Caroline Munro’s actress
Fatal Attraction smartly updated for the generation that invented the term ‘YouTube influencer’ with Keiynan Lonsdale as an influencer stalked by a psycho fan Ema Horvath
Stephen King writes the script for a TV mini-series adaptation of what he considers to be his best book about a widow who discovers a secret parallel world
Blumhouse production with Octavia Spencer as a stalkery mad woman who befriends a group of teens in an elaborate revenge plot. Quite what people though they were making is a scratch of the head
Spain’s Pastor Brothers have been rising genre name in the last few years. This is a psycho film concerning an unemployed man forced out of his apartment who returns to manipulate the life of the new tenant
Robin Williams gives a creepy performance as a one hour photo employee with stalkery tendencies who becomes obsessed with a family
This Nacho Vigalondo film prefigured Unfriended with everything taking place on a computer screen. A far more adventurous film with a wildly entertaining plot about celebrity stalking
Low-budget director Fred Olen Ray makes a softcore variation on Fatal Attraction with a vengeful Shauna O’Brien obtaining a job as the babysitter with the married man who jilted her
This seems to be shaping up to be a modern variant on The Collector in which Dominic Monaghan abducts the object of his desire and locks her in a cage beneath the dog shelter where he works. From there the film starts to twist expectations on their head
Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut is a psycho-thriller that prefigures Fatal Attraction with Eastwood playing a radio DJ who is stalked by a deranged Jessica Walter
The second effort from the revived Hammer Films, which creates some reasonable creepy effect in the story of Hilary Swank dealing with Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a stalker landlord after moving into a dream apartment
Modest and well-made film where Lin Shaye has the time of her life as an elderly widow who rents out her room and becomes attached to her tenant in disturbing ways
Tame psycho-thriller that plays out as a teen version of Fatal Attraction or Single White Female where Minka Kelly gets a psychopathic dorm roommate in Leighton Meester
Weepie romantic chick flick adapted from a Nicholas Sparks novel, included here for a fantastic twist ending. Sparks has stolen much of his plot from Stephen King’s Rose Madder. Even as such, wife-beating as the backdrop to a romance casts a distasteful shadow over the exercise
Creepy UK tv mini-series with David Tennant as a psycho boyfriend obsessed with Kate Ashfield
One of a series of Fatal Attraction copycats, a psycho-thriller where Mel Harris has her life torn apart by psycho secretary Sheila Kelley
Ultra-trashy thriller with Morgan Fairchild as a tv newsreader stalked by next-door neighbour Andrew Stevens where she engages in the title seduction to eliminate him. A really bad film
An erotic thriller that stars Angie Everhart as a probation officer who is drawn into the web of her client Richard Grieco who may or may not be a serial killer
Part of the late 1980s/early 90s spate of post-Fatal Attraction psycho-thrillers featuring deranged women stalkers. A creepy Jennifer Jason Leigh moves into Bridget Fonda’s apartment and then turns obsessive
Jaume Balaguero delivers this dark and gripping psycho-thriller about a likeable building manager who enjoys secretly playing cruel games and making life miserable for his tenants
Trashy Australian psycho-stalker film set in the world of fashion modelling that was bizarrely passed off as a copy of Halloween in the US
Okay psycho-thriller where Stefanie Powers is stalked in her new apartment while her son develops a mysterious imaginary companion
One of the lesser known John Carpenter films, a tv movie in which Lauren Hutton is stalked by a neighbour spying on her from the apartment building opposite
Pierre David produced psycho-thriller where Maryam d’Abo is befriended by Jay Underwood who proves to be a stalker in a creepily effective performance
British tv psycho film that works through a multi-layered plot of dexterous twists and a handsomely engaging lead actor
Australian thriller that is a blatant copy of Fatal Attraction
Passable attempt to return to the heyday of the 1990s erotic thriller. Made on the cheap side, this does an okay job of covering the basics until an improbable denouement
This is essentially Fatal Attraction relocated to a high school where athlete Jesse Bradford is stalked by Erika Christensen. This collapses in a series of ridiculous motivations
A Fatal Attraction copycat in which executive Timothy Hutton finds that seductive temp secretary Lara Flynn Boyle is killing off all rivals at his firm. This has the reputation as a Golden Turkey classic.
The Farrelly Brothers have become known for their crude and rude humour but this stalker comedy is one they hit with all barrels firing and has become regarded as a modern comedy classuc
Martin Lawrence directs and stars in a comedy variant on Fatal Attraction in which he has the role of a player who is stalked by a psycho Lynn Whitfield
Found Footage film about a stalker secretly filming a couple and abducting the wife, this tepidly circles around thriller cliches where other Found Footage films have delved into the psycho genre with more disturbing effect
Actress Alice Lowe directs/stars in a comedy about a woman who pursues the man she is infatuated with as both reincarnate through history
British tv movie variant on Fatal Attraction where a woman is stalked by her ex-husband Peter Davison
Woman directed New Zealand horror film where Annie Whittle is attacked by a mysterious assailant
A British-made tv movie about a female stalker. What sets this above Fatal Attraction and the other copies is that it is based on a true story
A psycho-thriller that hearkens back to the Fatal Attraction and the copycats it inspired where a newly engaged Rosario Dawson has to deal with her fiance’s vengeful ex, an ice cold Kathrine Heigl
The first film to go into wide US release during Covid lockdown with Russell Crowe snapping and turning psycho after a road rage incident. Much better than the lukewarm reception it received, this is a quite reasonable variant on Duel
Steven Soderbergh shoots a film on an iPhone. Claire Foy is wrongly incarcerated in an asylum only to be followed by a stalker posing as an orderly where her pleas for help taken as evidence of delusion
An anthology of five short Found Footage horror films each from a different director. As with any anthology these are variable in tone but are on the whole mostly effective and contain a number of alternately unearthly and spooky moments
A throwback to the 1980s/90s psycho-thriller that came out after Fatal Attraction featuring a surrogate mother who develops a stalkerish fixation on a husband. The crucial difference is that this is played with an all-Black cast but in a way that sends out weirdly uncomfortable racial messages
An erotic thriller where a couple are stalked by psychopathic couple after venturing into the swingers scene, this comes with a ridiculously high-handed condemnatory moralism
Very much informed by Blade Runner, this features Guy Pearce as a futuristic detective on the trail of a missing girl in the android zone