If you’re going to set a movie almost entirely within the confines of a stalled elevator, you’d better have compelling writing and get some top-notch performances out of your two leads. Thankfully, Chris Watt’s script for Stalker is mostly up to the task, and actors Sophie Skelton and Stuart Brennan shine in this lean, nervy cat-and-mouse thriller that hinges on unhealthy obsession far more than it does on escape from the claustrophobic confines of the broken freight elevator.
Skelton stars as Rose, a B-movie actress working on a career stepping-stone horror film. She finds herself stranded in the hotel elevator with Brennan’s Daniel, a B-roll cameraman for the same picture who is purportedly visiting the hotel to run some footage by the film’s editor. Initially, Rose goes through the expected panicked attempts to call for help, trying the inoperable call button and then trying mostly in vain to get reception or her director on her cell. Nobody’s attending the front desk in this creepy hotel, even as security cameras whir in the elevator and provide closed-circuit footage to monitors behind reception.
The rickety elevator judders from time to time, dropping a few floors or shooting up some. There’s external shots of rainwater dripping down through the shaft and splashing on some of the elevator’s cables and mechanisms. Something big falls onto the top of the elevator when Rose and Daniel attempt to force open a small, padlocked exit hatch in the ceiling. But this type of action is not the central focus, and, perhaps to the film’s detriment, Rose and Daniel’s situation rarely seems particularly dire. Rose has a few spells of claustrophobia-induced vertigo and Daniel takes the occasional desperate puff on his asthma inhaler. Otherwise, they spend the majority of the film conversing, mostly amicably, with the gregarious Rose opening up about the trials and tribulations of acting, while prying into the reserved Daniel’s work as a long-suffering second-unit man with aspirations of something bigger.
Rather than relying on their predicament for the film’s central tension, director Steve Johnson uses the dramatic irony implicit in its title and in subtle gestures and comments by Daniel to set the viewer on edge, leaving us wondering when the façade will drop and he will reveal himself as the predator he’s clearly set up to be. He doesn’t initially admit he knows Rose from the set, even though he has copious amounts of clandestinely shot footage of her—including a fight she had earlier that day with the horror film’s director (an odd cameo by former pro-wrestler Bret Hart). He admits to closely following her thus far lackluster career. His hand lingers close to touching Rose on several occasions, only for him to pull it back. Underneath his timid demeanor, there is clearly some suppressed aggression.
This simmering tension, when it finally bubbles over into a grisly third act, may defy viewer expectations, though it’s not especially savory or believable. Through long stretches of dialogue, there are moments when the film drifts along when it could otherwise be turning the screws. Nevertheless, Stalker manages to hold the attention throughout a lot of chatty dialogue within a confined space, hinging on effective tension created from hidden motives fueled by obsession. This elevator horror doesn’t exactly take the genre to new heights, but Stalker succeeds in offering two strong performances worth watching.
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