Stalker review – low-budget trapped-lift horror aims for cat-and-mouse drama
A young actor walks into a shonky hotel lift, ignoring the out of order sign. This is Rose Hepburn (Sophie Skelton), and frankly she is appalled to be staying at a three-star establishment while shooting a horror movie. (“It takes them an hour to bring you a coffee!”) Following Rose into the lift is a stammering, nervy man, who can’t meet her eyes when she asks which floor. The doors shut with a judder, and for the rest of British director Steve Johnson’s low-anxiety, low-budget horror we’re trapped in the broken lift with these two.
It starts interestingly enough with a guessing game as to which of them is the predator. At first, Daniel (Stuart Brennan) is the obvious contender. He is a cameraman on Rose’s film, and clearly he’s been following her (there’s a stash of memory cards in his bag). He’s a creepy peeping Tom, possibly a dangerous stalker. But then, maybe there’s more to Rose, who only got the part after the first choice actor disappeared in mysterious circumstances. She’s selfabsorbed and full of herself, belittling Daniel’s attempt to bust them out of the lift: “Not quite the hero we need are you?” As a cat and mouse drama, this is intriguing up to a point, though let down by heavy-handed dialogue.
What’s really missing in this confined space is claustrophobia. (I have never been trapped in a lift but less glamorously I did once get stuck in a toilet cubicle at the offices of a film company; the maintenance man passed a screwdriver under the door so I could remove the lock). But that sweaty, close-to-a-nervous breakdown tense feeling of being trapped is nowhere in the film. And where the script goes in its pulpy nasty final twist felt to me like a disturbingly misogynist move.
• Stalker is released on 10 October on digital platforms.