The pandemic was bad enough for ride share companies and their independent gig workers who saw work dry up. Even as things get back to normal, business might be affected by a movie like “Stalker” (Hulu, streaming).
If you’ve ever felt a little weird about the drivers for Lyft and Uber who are a little too chatty or a bit to insistent in offering mints, the L.A. driver in Tyler Savage’s “Stalker” for a fictional company named Ryde beats them all.
Michael Joplin plays a driver you may initially not give a second thought about, who wants to befriend a guy to whom he gives a ride, so starts texting him a lot.
Cities can be lonely places and newcomers may be especially vulnerable to meeting new people and trying to ignore some of their odder habits. But Joplin’s character, Roger, is a little too insistent in befriending this mellow newcomer from Texas, Andy (Vincent Van Horn) and the moment he skips a planned brunch, the driver goes a little bonkers, embodying the criminal activity in the film’s title.
Just about every Lifetime movie seems to be about a stalker, so some of the creepier things Savage comes up with are familiar. But this one has a strange angle: about a guy whose friendship is jilted by another guy, who frankly would rather spend his time with an appealing woman he also just met, Sam (Christine Ko).
Things get weird and things get weirder, as will happen in horror. But then there’s a twist that just about undoes all of the things that have gone well in the film.