Theme: Stalkers

Stalkers are a subset of Psychos and Serial Killers. Whereas a serial killer will kill a variety of people, a stalker will fixate on one individual often regarding them as their love or best friend.

On screen, stalkers will come into the lives of their target and present an initial charm – they can appear as a friend, someone who professes love, or as hired help – before they are spurned in some way. They then turn malicious and disrupt their target’s life – befriend those around them, inveigle their workplace and the like. They are malevolently persistent individuals and will gaslight, invade the homes and eventually imprison and/or try to kill the object of their obsession.

There have been assorted stalker films beginning with Clint Eastwood’s Play Misty for Me (1971). The first major cluster of stalker films came with the popular hit of Fatal Attraction (1987) where Glenn Close becomes obsessed with married Michael Douglas after a casual fling. The popularity of this led to a number of copies. Since then, variations on the stalker theme have become the regular grist of cable Psycho-Thrillers.