A One Mann’s Movies Film Review of “Lover, Stalker, Killer” (2024).
“Lover, Stalker, Killer”, new on Netflix, is a documentary about a bizarre stalker-incident that happened in Ohio about 10 years ago. The story is great. The documentary… not so much.
Bob the Movie Man Rating:
Plot Summary:
Dave Kroupa is an everyman car mechanic looking for love in a new town. But after he goes on a date with Cari Farver, his life becomes a terrifying journey along the plot lines of “Fatal Attraction”. No bunny is safe!
Certification:
UK: NR; US: NR. (Netflix rating = “15”).
Talent:
Directed by: Sam Hobkinson.
Twitter Handle: #LoverStalkerKiller.
Running Time: 1h 30m.
“Lover, Stalker, Killer” Film Review:
Positives:
- The story is both bizarre and fascinating… and is definitely the reason to watch this.
- Is a point of these true-life dramas to make you feel slightly smug at your detective-like intuition? If so, I’ll treat it as a positive that I postulated almost immediately what was probably going on (and was proved to be correct)!
Negatives:
- How do we take 60 minutes of content and pad it out into a 90 minute film? That’s rather what this feels like. And it does this with lots of mind-numbingly dumb commentary and dramatic reenactments that make you want to scream at the screen “JUST GET ON WITH IT!!!”. At one point, an address is given as Apartment 12. So we slowly walk past them all counting, “Apartment 6, Apratment 7, Apartment 8,, …. etc etc” (of course, as you knew before he started, there is no “Apartment 12”). The mansplaining goes into overdrive at some points. A police chief drawls “We put a tracker on her car” then going pointlessly on to explain that “This allowed us to see her GPS coordinates at any time”. (D’urrrr!).
- The music steals SHAMELESSLY from Jerry Goldsmith’s magnificant theme from Basic Instinct.
Summary Thoughts on “Lover, Stalker, Killer”
My “Flickering Dreams” colleague Scott Forbes made me laugh on our WhatsApp group by commenting that the film’s pace was driving him mad so he watched the rest on 1.5x speed. That’s actually a wise move and would make this fascinating slice of crazy US crime much more watchable.
Where to Watch it (Powered by Justwatch)
Trailer for “Lover, Stalker, Killer”:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46RuZLu6dso .
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