“Everybody’s got a stalker,” Alexis Rose asserts in the expanded lyrics of a “A Little Bit Alexis,” and given my own misadventures in being trailed online, I can’t entirely disagree. In Lifetime’s amusing Cyberstalker (2012), it’s Mischa Barton’s Aiden Ashley who captures the depraved attentions of an obsessive, but the Internet’s merely a gimmick. He tracks the teenager offline as well, eventually breaking into her house and murdering her parents, though the editing was such that I’m uncertain of his methods.
It’s the first of several strangely bloodless acts of violence he’ll commit in the course of the movie, with weapons including a motorcycle, a hacked traffic light and a taser. Why he does any of it, I haven’t the foggiest. How he came to fixate on Aiden, I couldn’t tell you. The screenplay, credited to Kraig X. Wenman, seems to have been composed by an online story generator that randomly inserts words like “IP address,” “algorithm,” “hard drive” and “server” into dialogue that almost never advances the plot.
Thirteen years after losing her parents, Aiden uses a rotary phone and considers herself “off the grid,” though she has a credit card. “You know me,” she jokes. “Low-tech or no-tech.” She rarely leaves her loft and has installed deadbolts on its doors in triplicate, a waste of time and money when the doors are hollow-core. Her stalker was never identified and her parents’ case is cold, which haunts Det. Page (Ebbie’s Ron Lea), whose dogged focus on his work has naturally cost him his family.
Page’s younger partner, Bonham (Peter Dillon)—we’re spared a Plant or Jones—disparages his “Flintstone files” and suggests applying modern technology to a renewed investigation. For this Page relies on Jack Dayton (Dan Levy), whose company Cyber Crimetics does something-or-other that’s never adequately explained. Together they investigate, for equally murky reasons, suspects who don’t make a lick of sense, like Aiden’s generic new love interest (Marco Grazzini) and the avuncular, flamboyantly gay gallerist (Mark Caven) who sells her paintings.
The whole thing’s a sh*tshow, from the stalking to the murders, attempted murders and every detail of the investigation. That director Curtis Crawford, whose oeuvre includes The Psycho She Met Online and Webcam Cheerleaders (yes, those are actual titles), hasn’t the slightest interest in trying to make heads or tails of it only enhanced my enjoyment.
Barton’s talents are utterly wasted in her role, and repeated jokes about her character’s weight are in extremely poor taste, particularly in light of her history. Her casting, however, was wackily inspired. Like Aiden, she was stalked in her teens (albeit by paparazzi), and she was relentlessly bullied by Perez Hilton, who has a few things in common with Aiden’s stalker. That Levy later created Schitt’s Creek’s Alexis, who was inspired by Barton’s generation of tabloid fixtures, brought everything full circle.
… But wait, there’s more!
Here’s a misty-watercolor memory that deserves its own Bernard Herrmann score: In the early aughts, a friendly reader who enjoyed my work on another website sent me an email, did some sleuthing and realized we lived in neighboring cities. She began calling me, even though I hadn’t shared my number. Eventually she phoned to say “Hey, I’m parked outside your house!” And indeed she was, though I hadn’t shared my address, either. That was good for a few life lessons not soon forgotten.
Streaming and DVD availability
Cyberstalker is available on DVD and currently streams free on LMN’s YouTube channel; it’s also been on Hulu in the past.
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Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
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