Stalkers
January 14th, 2026
MOVIE: STALKERS
STARRING: OLIVIA STADLER, SCARLETT DICARO, ALLISHA PELLETIER
DIRECTED BY: PAUL THOMPSON
AMovieGuy.com’s RATING: 1 STAR (Out of 4)
RATED: R
RUN TIME: 107 MINUTES
With a title like Stalkers, I hoped for a B-movie—one of those slasher flicks that’s so absurd it becomes entertaining. I never fault a film for borrowing from ’80s classics like A Nightmare on Elm Street or the often-overlooked Prom Night, but this independent thriller fails to be the fun kind of bad. From the very first frame of director Paul Thompson’s film, it’s clear that Stalkers is a low-budget production plagued by inexperienced actors and a complete inability to engage its audience. Stalkers is bad from beginning to end.
The story opens with young Charlotte (Scarlett DiCaro) sharing a pleasant family dinner with her parents before heading off to bed. Unbeknownst to them, someone is already inside the house, waiting to murder Charlotte’s parents and change the 12-year-old’s life forever. The film then introduces its main character, Kate (Olivia Stadler), a porn star living in Los Angeles and consumed by regret over her life choices. Out of nowhere, she receives a phone call from Justine (Allisha Pelletier), a child services employee who informs Kate that Charlotte is the daughter she gave up for adoption at 16—and that she is now the only person left to protect her.
On paper, Stalkers, written by Maryna Gaidar and Luke Sneyd, could have worked. In execution, however, it collapses almost immediately. The film flirts with a premise similar to Ti West’s X, Pearl, and MaXXXine: a woman with a porn background finds herself surrounded by a string of mysterious killings. Unfortunately, the comparison falls apart when the closest cinematic relative Stalkers actually resembles is The Room. Between the barren set design, wooden performances, and astonishingly inept dialogue, the film is painful to sit through.
That’s the truly disappointing part. I don’t want to hate movies, and I didn’t want to hate Stalkers. But there’s simply nothing here that works. Random high school teens harass Kate and Charlotte out of boredom—or rather, because the script demands it. Other characters appear solely to keep the audience guessing about the killer, such as an old high school classmate who inexplicably offers Kate a place to stay, a decision she accepts without question. Every character feels like filler, and Thompson never gives us a reason to care whether any of them live or die.
When a movie is as bad as Stalkers, it becomes a window into the kind of low-budget projects actors in Los Angeles take just to keep their skills sharp between Uber shifts. For many, that’s simply the reality of the industry. Unfortunately, Stalkers isn’t worth the audience’s time, and it arguably wasn’t worth the time of the people who made it. I don’t think everyone involved should abandon their Hollywood dreams—but this is definitely a film you’d want scrubbed from your IMDb page. I felt secondhand embarrassment watching it. Imagine how everyone else feels.
1 STAR
STALKERS IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE TO WATCH ON TUBI.
Written by: Leo Brady
