It is the spring of “Baby Reindeer.” Netflix’s addictive limited series about a struggling comedian (Richard Gadd) working at a bar who makes the biggest mistake of his life when he gives a lonely woman (Jessica Gunning) a cup of tea on the house is the most watched series currently on the streamer and viewership is growing. And the fact that it’s based on a true story, makes “Baby Reindeer” even more creep and chilling. It’s a must-see voyeur thriller.
The same was true in the fall of 1987 with Adrian Lyne’s “Fatal Attraction.” Audiences flocked to the hard R-rated thriller which starred a wild-haired Glenn Close as an editor with a publishing company who has one-night stand with a happily married attorney (Michael Douglas) whose wife and daughter are out of town. Though it’s “understood” that it’s just a fling, Close’s Alex just won’t let go. “I’m not gonna be ignored,” she snarls. And Alex even goes so far as to kill and boil the pet bunny of Douglas’ daughter. The New York Times review noted: “This spurned lover’s pique becomes ever more terrifying as the film progresses” adding that the film “provides some textbook examples of how to scare an audience even when the audience knows what’s coming.” Internationally, the film earned over $156 million and was nominated for six Oscars including best film, director, and actress.
After scoring a best foreign film Oscar for his joyous 1973 comedy “Day for Night,” New Wave filmmaker Francois Truffaut tackled his first true story-the haunting, sad 1975 “The Story of Adele H,” which earned Isabelle Adjani an Academy Award nomination for her heartbreaking performance. She plays the daughter of Victor Hugo who loses her mind when she falls in love with a British soldier (Bruce Robinson). Adele suffers from l’amour fou — an obsessive, mad love which grows continually worse even when he rebuffs her. The New York Times stated, “unable to cope with the truth and using her imagination and her feelings as carefully as someone writing a piece of fiction, Adele created another world where she becomes Lt. Pinson’s wife, where love was her religion (and no humiliation too great a sacrifice).” Though Adjani, who was just 19 when she made the movie, lost the Oscar to Louise Fletcher for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” she was named best actress by the National Board of Review, the National Society of Film Critics and New York Film Critics Circle.
Of course, stalking movies don’t just revolve around a spurned woman. Hell, also hath no fury as a man scorned. Especially if the man is Robert Ryan in Fred Zinnemann’s gritty 1948 tale of revenge “Act of Violence.” The object of Ryan’s obsession is Van Heflin’s Frank, a World War II hero who is a thriving contractor with a beautiful young wife (Janet Leigh) and baby. But their world is upended with the arrival of Joe (Ryan), who has a severe limp from a war wound. Joe was in the same POW camp as Frank and were buddies. Joe knows a deep dark secret about Frank. Out for revenge, Joe stalks Frank and his family like a rabid dog. What makes “Act of Violence” so interesting is that once Frank’s secret is revealed one realizes he is much more the villain than Joe. And Frank will do anything to stop Joe from ruining his “picture perfect life.”
Robin Williams received strong reviews as an unexpected stalker in 2002’s “One Hour Photo,” directed by Mark Romanek. With his white, blond hair, glasses and polyester uniform, Williams manages to be both terrifying and sympathetic as Sy, a lonely photo developer at a mega-store. Over the years, Sy had been making extra copies of one family’s snapshots because they look so happy. In fact, he’s obsessed with family. But Sy cracks when he sees photos of the farther with his girlfriend. Romanek told me in a 2002 L.A. Times interview that at its heart, “One Hour Photo” is a “character study. I was thinking of it as almost a very sad love story. Sy is so desperately in love with this family. It was just crushing to him that they don’t live the same lives as the snapshots. I found that sort of sad and pathetic.”
Gordo, the stalker Joel Edgerton plays in 2015’s “The Gift,” is also sad and pathetic. (Edgerton also wrote and make his feature directorial debut with the acclaimed psychological thriller.) Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall play an upwardly mobile couple who have just moved from Chicago to Los Angeles where Bateman’s Simon grew up. One day, the couple meet the friendly, albeit socially awkward Gordo whom Simon went to high school wife in L.A. Soon, they are receiving gifts from Gordo at their front door, and he arrives uninvited at their house. Just as Frank has a secret in “Act of Violence,” Hall’s Robyn learns Simon had bullied Gordo so badly in high school, that he made his life a nightmare from which he has never recovered. “You are done with the past, but the past is not done with you,” Gordo warns Simon. Edgerton told me in a 2015 L.A. Times chat that he isn’t a fan of “buckets of blood or body counts” in movies. “I am a fan of unsettling an audience in a way that has social resonance-the fertile ground of talking about bullying not just bullying that occurred at school, but how it plays out now in adult life.”
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