12 year old Charlotte's (Scarlett DiCaro) foster parents (Sayla de Goede, Rick Hastings) have just been brutally murdered by a psycho killer, and now child care worker Justine (Allisha Pelletier) is looking for her real mother to take care of her - and finds her in porn star Kate (Olivia Stadler). Kate is less than excited to hear about her daughter whom she's given up all these years ago, but seeing how her own manager (Paul Thompson) still treats her like a cheap prostitute after living off her back for all these years, Kate figures taking care of Charlotte might be the very chance she needs to start anew. So she returns to her hometown and does her best to be a good mother to the traumatized girl. But Charlotte is slow to warm up to her, and when she finds out Kate has been doing porn, that doesn't help all that much, either. And returning to her hometown isn't a bed of roses either, especially since Kate's constantly hit on by a porn-obsessed teen fan of hers, Corey (Sam Wexler), who obviously has a hard time controlling his hormones. But luck seemingly strikes when she meets Mike (Abbas Wahab), a friend from high school who offers for and Charlotte to house-sit a mansion complete with indoor swimming pool he owns, which really seems like the break Kate has always hoped for ... until of course she learns from Justine Mike has once attacked her with a knife. And when Kate and Charlotte find a room full of pictures and DVDs of Charlotte's porn career in the basement and find out the whole house is equiüpped with CCTV cameras to spy in on them, things take a turn for the worse. At the same time, Corey and his girlfriend Aubrey (Hannah Mae Beatty) have broken into the mansion to have sex next to the swimming pool. What's much worse though, the psycho killer who has killed Charlotte's parents is still on the loose, and has since gained access to the mansion as well ...

Sure, Stalkers has all the earmarks of a slasher movie, up to the title that seems to strip the genre to its barest - and yet, for the most part the film just doesn't feel like a slasher as it puts its effort in creating characters that feel real and have real life problems and thus feel relatable, and that have actual character arcs rather than serving as cannon fodder.  And an able cast really brings the movie to life, as does a directorial effort that finds just the right balance between subtle and spectacle. And the result is certainly not run-of-the-mill, but all the more worthwhile for it.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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