synopsis : a mentally unstable man undergoing psychotherapy saves a boy from a potentially fatal accident and then falls in love with the boy 's mother , a fledgling restauranteur .
unsuccessfully attempting to gain the woman 's favor , he takes pictures of her and kills a number of people in his way .
comments : stalked is yet another in a seemingly endless string of spurned - psychos - getting - their - revenge type movies which are a stable category in the 1990s film industry , both theatrical and direct - to - video .
their proliferation may be due in part to the fact that they 're typically inexpensive to produce ( no special effects , no big name stars ) and serve as vehicles to flash nudity ( allowing them to frequent late - night cable television ) .
stalked wavers slightly from the norm in one respect : the psycho never actually has an affair ; on the contrary , he 's rejected rather quickly ( the psycho typically is an ex - lover , ex - wife , or ex - husband ) .
other than that , stalked is just another redundant entry doomed to collect dust on video shelves and viewed after midnight on cable .
stalked does not provide much suspense , though that is what it sets out to do .
interspersed throughout the opening credits , for instance , a serious - sounding narrator spouts statistics about stalkers and ponders what may cause a man to stalk ( it 's implicitly implied that all stalkers are men ) while pictures of a boy are shown on the screen .
after these credits , a snapshot of actor jay underwood appears .
the narrator states that " this is the story of daryl gleason " and tells the audience that he is the stalker .
of course , really , this is the story of restauranteur brooke daniels .
if the movie was meant to be about daryl , then it should have been called stalker not stalked .
okay .
so we know who the stalker is even before the movie starts ; no guesswork required .
stalked proceeds , then , as it begins : obvious , obvious , obvious .
the opening sequence , contrived quite a bit , brings daryl and brooke ( the victim ) together .
daryl obsesses over brooke , follows her around , and tries to woo her .
ultimately rejected by her , his plans become more and more desperate and elaborate .
these plans include the all - time , psycho - in - love , cliche : the murdered pet .
for some reason , this genre 's films require a dead pet to be found by the victim stalked .
stalked is no exception ( it 's a cat this time -- found in the shower ) .
events like these lead to the inevitable showdown between stalker and stalked , where only one survives ( guess who it invariably always is and you 'll guess the conclusion to this turkey ) .
stalked 's cast is uniformly adequate : not anything to write home about but also not all that bad either .
jay underwood , as the stalker , turns toward melodrama a bit too much .
he overdoes it , in other words , but he still manages to be creepy enough to pass as the type of stalker the story demands .
maryam d'abo , about the only actor close to being a star here
( she played the bond chick in the living daylights ) , is equally adequate as the " stalked " of the title , even though she seems too ditzy at times to be a strong , independent business - owner .
brooke ( d'abo ) needs to be ditzy , however , for the plot to proceed .
toward the end , for example , brooke has her suspicions about daryl .
to ensure he wo n't use it as another excuse to see her , brooke decides to return a toolbox he had left at her place to his house .
does she just leave the toolbox at the door when no one answers ?
of course not .
she tries the door , opens it , and wanders around the house .
when daryl returns , he enters the house , of course , so our heroine is in danger .
somehow , even though her car is parked at the front of the house , right by the front door , daryl is oblivious to her presence inside .
the whole episode places an incredible strain on the audience 's suspension of disbelief and questions the validity of either character 's intelligence .
stalked receives two stars because , even though
it is highly derivative and somewhat boring
, it is not so bad that it can not be watched .
rated r mostly for several murder scenes and brief nudity in a strip bar , it is not as offensive as many other thrillers in this genre are .
if you 're in the mood for a good suspense film , though , stake out something else .
Output: N