“Stalker” is a horror thriller that stars Sophie Skelton and Stuart Brennan in the lead roles based on the story, which is a cat-and-mouse tale of a predator and the Stalker. The story focuses on the narrative where an actress gets trapped in an out-of-order elevator with her Stalker. The film starts with a young actor, Rose Hepburn, walking into the out-of-order lift, followed by her Stalker, Daniel Reed, a shy man who could hardly meet Rose’s eye. The film gives off an eerie feeling of a horror movie, where one can feel the anxiety of the victim getting trapped with her predator inside an elevator. Low lighting and an empty reception at a three-star establishment all seem to be setting the tone of the film. It is directed by the British director Steve Johnson.
Spoilers Ahead
‘Stalker’ Story
The film starts in a three-star establishment on a very stormy, rainy night, when no one seems to be out in the bad weather. A young actor enters the hotel, followed by a shy man and they both get trapped in an elevator. The elevator had an out-of-sign order, but ignoring the order, Rose, the actor, entered the elevator anyway, and Daniel followed her. Within a few minutes into the film, we get to understand that Daniel, the obvious predator, and Stalker, who was also a cameraman in Rose’s film, have been following her for quite a long time. Daniel was a shy man who seemed to be very shy and creepy in his approach, as he could not even talk properly when Rose was asking him about generic things. Rose worked on horror films and got stuck with Daniel. The elevator moved haphazardly, and the stories between these two individuals unfolded with the elevator’s movement.
As the story of the film progresses, we get to see that both of them try very hard and look for options to get out of the elevator but fail to do so. Rose, being stuck, seemed to have a panic attack and informed Daniel about her claustrophobia, whereas Daniel had an asthma attacks frequently while having the conversation. Rose and Daniel seemed to be very unstable sitting inside the elevator, but then the two bonded over the stories from their film set, and the conversation progressed. From the conversation between Rose and Daniel, we get to see how the director of Rose’s film was aggressive, and Daniel showed a recording of an argument between the director and Rose. This recording proved Daniel to be a stalker of Rose, and his getting stuck in the elevator with her looked planned too. Further into the conversation, Rose seemed to have replaced some actor named Alice in the film that she was working on, and they had been extensively talking about theories of how Alice had vanished mysteriously.
From the context, it becomes obvious to us how Rose and Daniel might have been involved in that, as we wait further for the mystery to unravel. Further, into the narrative, we see that Rose knew about Daniel filming her because she was Daniel’s Stalker herself. She tied Daniel up with cables and other kinds of stuff inside the elevator by making him dizzy with her drink and then took her revenge on Daniel. She became upset with Daniel as he chose Alice over her in the first place to stalk; she felt secondary and unattractive to Daniel’s stalking. Once Alice was out of the picture, Daniel focused on Rose. Rose is both the victim and predator in the scenario, as she decides to punish Daniel on her own for his misdeeds.
How Did The Victim Become The Predator?
The film acts as meta in nature, as the leads in “Stalker” are kind of similar to what is in the film. Rose was a narcissistic, full-of-herself character who did not like to come second to someone else, be it stalking. In the film, she got upset with Daniel because he chose Alice over her and wanted to punish him for his errors. Inside the elevator, she let him know how she had kept an eye on him and how she had killed Alice to get the chance in the film. She described her plans extensively and slyly while holding a knife to Daniel’s throat. She cuts his dick off as a punishment for not choosing her and for stalking her and Alice. She pins the murder of Alice on Daniel as well. The ending of the film is predictable, but its execution and Sophie Skelton’s acting made it worth the wait.
The character of Rose kills Daniel but makes it look like an accident, as we hear in the dialogue, ‘I have been acting all through my life.’ She dialed emergency before killing Daniel and made it look like an accident, which can be understood as the character of Rose had always been acting, and she was a very good performer. Rose was on a constant mission to prove herself to someone who is a great actor, and that is the reason she got upset when Alice got the film without auditioning or when Daniel chose to stalk Alice instead of her, etcetera. The film tries to blur the lines between fiction and reality, creating a story within a story, and becomes quite successful in doing so.