STALKER (2011)

by Mark'd Commode

4 out of 10

Release Date: 17th October 2011 (DVD Premiere)

Director: Martin Kemp (Top Dog)

Cast: Jane March, Anna Brecon, Billy Murray, Jennifer Matter, Danny Young with Linda Hayden and Colin Salmon

Writer: Martin Kemp / James Kenelm Clarke

Trailer: STALKER

Who remembers 1992’s erotic art-house movie L’amant (The Lover)?  I remember the controversy but was actually bewitched by the story of longing and first love.  I think I was one of a handful that understood the film and saw beyond the soft-porn tags the media were flinging around.  The director Jean-Jacques Annaud was notorious for being vague about whether the sex scenes starring Jane March (THE COLOR OF NIGHT) and Tony Leung (THE KILLER) were real. Jane March was dubbed the Sinner From Pinner and after one or two other films in the 1990s, she disappeared into obscurity.  Until now.  Martin Kemp (JACK FALLS), himself an former icon from a lost decade, has here reinvented himself as a film director and chosen Jane March for his first leading lady.  A good match.  As a comeback for Jane March and a directing calling card for Martin Kemp this is perhaps a little low-key to begin shouting about it from the rooftops.  Whilst it’s not the sharpest horror debut ever there is still enough to like about Stalker.

Stalker’s hinges on that old chestnut where a blocked writer begins work on a new book in a remote location, usually their agent’s house.  Here the house belongs to a long lost relative. Our heroine, Paula (ANNA BRECON – VENDETTA) surely enough begins to have flashbacks to a sunny childhood , but quite quickly the dreams develop into something darker.  A young boy is seen at her peripheries.  The creepy staff led by Mrs Brown played by Hammer Horror alumnus Linda Hayden hint that the house could be haunted.  Fears are allayed with the arrival of Linda (Jane March) who has been employed by the publishers to help her over her recent breakdown and get her writing again. Possibly even to ghostwrite.  But after coming across as a caring and kind soul, Linda becomes obsessed with the task of getting the story down and her behaviour becomes increasingly aggressive and alienating. That’s as much of the preliminary as I’ll give you.  Needless to say nothing is what it seems and everything has it’s place and time to be tumbled out of the closet.

The build up in Stalker is nice and slow, I find horrors that dive straight into the action annoying. The main characters are established with economy but they are drawn well enough to understand what’s likely to happen to them.  Strongest of all is Billy Murray (RISE AND FALL OF THE WHITE COLLAR HOOLIGAN), well-cast as an literary journalist, who is keen to get an audience with Paula to talk about her past and the recent breakdown.  Jane March and Anna Brecon are well matched as the ying and yang, trying to produce a book at the stake of their collective sanity.  Where Stalker throws the game away are in the horror moments.  It’s one of those horrors that sign post every jump, every surprise appearance by a baddie / ghost / zombie / nun / cat  / pigeon (delete).  A character accidentaly impales their hand on a nail and it’s accompanied with a brass fanfare worthy of the Titantic going down.  I thought there was a cow sat behind the couch – BLAHHHHHHHHH!!!!! If the action doesn’t make you hit the ceiling in fear, the score will get you there.  What I did also find irritating whilst watching it, only to realise that its part of the grand design, where Paula’s mood-swings.  Horror fans won’t be in the dark beyond  twenty minutes in.  I’m afraid you have to be pretty dim for the penny not to drop (haha read Joe Pesci II’s review below – he didn’t work out the twist and he’s a supposed academic boffin!). But there’s still enjoyment to be had. Colin Salmon (THE KINGDOM) puts in another creepy cameo as Paula’s ‘friend’.  He’s seems to be competing with Billy Murray for cameo-king status in independent cinema these days.

Stalker trips up in the latter stages with a rash of inconsistencies, continuity errors and a need to fall back on every cliche in the creepy house reference book. It’s always the endings to these kind of films that stick with you as well because horror films with twists aren’t so much about the journey. They are big on the pay off instead.  Sadly it  all goes a bit limp and gormless.  A script clanger about Billy Murray‘s whereabouts would make the writers of Bladerunner proud (reference the 5,6 or 7 skin-jobs conversation).   Martin Kemp’s homages to Hammer with his disorienting camera angles, creepy locations and casting of Linda Hayden show that they have a certain type of audience in their sights.  I generally like this type of film but being objective it could have been tighter towards the latter stages. I still enjoyed it on its own trashy terms. I did enjoy the return of Jane March and the genre casting of some of my favourites in UK independent cinema today.  Martin Kemp shows promise as a director but beyond the odd tick, his style is anonymous but competent.  I’d be curious to see what he’s got up his sleeve next as I’ve enjoyed his recent cameos in the dire Jack Falls and the lunatic Strippers Vs. Werewolves.

4 out of 10 – What we have here is a lumpy re-tread of Secret Window featuring a good central comeback performance by Jane March. Good back up from Colin Salmon and Billy Murray. A satisfying build up leads to a metaphorical bowl of spaghetti with budget constrictions, script mistakes and continuity errors interfering with all the actual story.  An OK debut for Martin Kemp but the only thing that will frighten you is the soundtrack which comes across like “The Shining“ on crack.  The producers have certainly gone on to make worse than this but they’re also on a promising up-swing so maybe Martin Kemp will get a second crack at directing to improve on his work here.  He also needs a script doctor! MEDIC!

READ JOE PESCI II’s favourable review below>>>

WHAT HAVE I SEEN THAT ACTOR IN BEFORE?

One thought on “STALKER (2011)”

  1. STALKER by Joe Pesci II aka Matt Usher

    I quite liked this. It’s a good old-fashioned Freudian psychological thriller, which makes no sense when you think it over, and even less when you actually watch it. It relies on time-worn clichés like someone unseen standing watching another character, or suddenly appearing in a mirror.

    So Anna Brecon is a one-hit-wonder-novelist struggling with her second novel, a nervous breakdown, a nosy journalist and a smug publisher. So, she goes to some relative’s handy castle to wrestle with her demons and get writing again. But there’s a creepy cook and a swarthy gardener to interrupt her peace. And, most disturbingly, a surprisingly zealous personal assistant (Jane March on suitably deranged form). Does she have an agenda of her own? Of course she does, look at the title. It all ends in tears.

    The film is based on a dodgy 1970s British film called variously EXPOSÉ, THE HOUSE ON STRAW HILL, or TRAUMA, which earned itself some notoriety as one of the original video nasties of the early 80s, but which you can get on Ebay now for a fiver or so. There are two main differences between the films. The earlier film is absolutely filthy; and the identity and motivation of the villain is different. There are lots of similarities though: the set-up of the plot is more or less the same, names have been more or less retained, as has Linda Hayden, who graduates from secretary to housekeeper.

    Most of the oldest tricks in the book turn up: shadowy half-seen figures, a cat (though of the two cat clichés – cat jumping out and scaring someone / cat gets killed – we only get one), a basement where the bodies mount up. On her arrival at the mansion our heroine reads a note from her absent relative which is along the lines of ‘be careful in the basement’. If only she had heeded these wise words. But if she had we would have been deprived of the truly nerve-jangling bit where she descends into the creepy basement (before the bodies start piling up). Somehow she manages to drive a nail through her palm. This moment is accompanied by a quite crazed fortissimo in the orchestra – you’d think they were in the basement waiting for her. Actually, you’d think they were in the room with you. And as with all films about fictional writers we have to put up with them reading out loads of really bad prose.

    Jane March puts in a spirited turn as the pussy-pulverising maniac. Anna Brecon is convincingly whiny as the pathetic blocked writer. I liked the not very good publisher, and it’s always nice to see Colin Salmon appear in more than one scene, even if he is saddled with abysmal dialogue. He even nearly makes it to the end. And Billy Murray has one of his better deaths, though he too has to suffer deeply poor dialogue. However, I don’t know about you, but whenever characters in films talk about writing, or the writing business, it always sounds like they’re talking nonsense, as if the screenwriter doesn’t know anything at all about writing. Not that I’m suggesting that you have to be illiterate to write films. But they all talk a load of cobblers about ‘inspiration’ and stuff like that. And Billy Murray’s slimy journalist is clearly meant to be from the gutter press, even though he’s a ‘reviewer’ (or critic as the actual job title would be) for something like The Book Review. (Mind you, I think he gives two different titles for the publication so maybe he’s just a big fibber.)

    To my eternal shame I didn’t work out what was going on until the moment just before Colin Salmon worked it out. The clues were there, and I have no excuse. I am sorry.

    STALKER is the feature debut of director Martin Kemp, the strangely popular TV actor and Spandau Ballerina. His directorial style is as anodyne as his acting. This is actually a good thing though. By and large, unless they’re geniuses, directors should stay out of the way, and Kemp achieves this. Certainly, I wouldn’t even be mentioning the director if he hadn’t achieved fame disfiguring so much celluloid and vinyl in his time. (Sorry Spandau Eastenders fans.)

    The big question of course is this: how does STALKER compare with the multi-titled film it is a remake / reboot / re-imagining / revision of? Well in the 1970s the novelist (called Paul) was played by Udo Kier (a bloke) and he has none of the neuroses that nag poor Anna Brecon (whose character was Paula). He does have a dark secret though, which is hinted at in weird psychedelic / semi-pornographic moments. Meanwhile Linda Hayden plays Linda (as does Jane March) the unhinged secretary with a dark secret which is hinted at in less psychedelic and more pornographic moments. And she gets raped by Jacko from Brush Strokes. Well, there’s none of that sort of stuff going on in STALKER thank you very much. One of the makers of STALKER clearly made a good, rigorous analysis of THE HOUSE ON STRAW HILL / EXPOSÉ / TRAUMA and realised that the rude content was completely extraneous and has therefore booted it out of this remake / reboot / re-imagining / revision. (Or maybe Equity charge extra for sex scenes.) So Mr Kemp is to be congratulated for exercising the self-control which so lamentably eluded writer / producer / director Mr Kelman Clarke all those years ago.

    This is a proper, wholesome, old-fashioned, perfectly competent, efficient, if unexceptional little thriller. Ideally it would have been a TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED or something of that ilk. It may not have whatever a film needs for cult success, but it works on its own terms, and if you were to stumble across it one idle evening you could do worse than watch it. And it’s worth watching just for the bit where the cat meets its toilet-related doom. Oh no, I’ve said too much.

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