The Top 10 Best Stalker Movies
5. Ingrid Goes West
To be perfectly honest, it took me a good 30 minutes to finally figure out that Ingrid Goes West wasn’t a comedy, which is good because it’s not funny at all. Audry Plaza branches out by playing Ingrid, a social media stalker who becomes stalked with an “Instagram Influencer” and celebrity played by Elizabeth Olsen. Ingrid becomes obsessed with the seemingly perfect life of her victim and sets out to implant herself in the woman’s life in order to cure her social alienation. Ingrid Goes West is a strange film because it’s hard not to relate to its message about how messed up social media is, but at the same time I can’t really feel sympathy for a stalker. I guess, that just does to show how good it is though since it left me feeling so torn.
4. The Gift
I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about Joel Edgerton. Don’t get me wrong, The Gift is a complex and fully realized film, but it’s not a movie without a clear cut good guy and bad guy. Well, at least not where the male characters are concerned. The film follows Jason Bateman in his douchiest performance to date. In the movie, he plays a guy who moves to LA with his wife only to run into an old friend. Turns out though that his old friend is not what he seems and he slowly encroaches on the couples’ life. To make matters worse, Bateman’s character isn’t what he seems either, and his wife (Rebecca Hall) ends up caught between the two of them. It ends on a truly gut-wrenching note, so this is not one of those stalker movies for the faint of heart.
3. Unsane
The worst part about having a stalker is that more often than not, no one believes you. Unsane took this to a spin chilling level as Claire Foy is driven to a point where she starts to questions her own sanity thanks to her own stalker. The worst part is that when she turns to people for help, she’s tossed into a bureaucratic nightmare of an asylum. There she continues to question everything until her stalker suddenly appears under an alias as an orderly. Unsane is so chilling because it shows that people are more interested in covering their own asses rather than helping those in need. It also shows just how helpless authorities can be in these situations, which raises the question of what a woman is supposed to do when she’s terrorized by a stalker.
2. Cape Fear
Cape Fear is well known for being one of the best remakes of all time, but it’s also earning a spot on this list as one of the creepiest stalker movies ever made. The film follows a criminal wrongfully convicted, though hardly innocent, man (Robert De Niro) who has his eyes set on revenge against the lawyer who betrayed him (Nick Nolte). Of course, just killing the man would be too easy, so DeNiro slowly works his way into the man’s life, exploiting loopholes in the law in order to keep himself out of trouble and once again showing just how difficult it can be dealing with a stalker. DeNiro though takes things too far when he threatens Notle’s family and the two clash in an epic finale that makes this one of Martin Scorsese’s finest movies.
1. Sleep Tight
Coming in at number one on this list of stalker movies is one that I only just recently discovered. Few understand just how terrifying and serious a stalker can be. The film follows an apartment doorman (Luis Tosar) who becomes obsessed with a woman (Marta Etura) simply because she’s “too happy.” He enters her apartment unknowingly to her and tries to make her life as miserable as possible without alerting her to his presence and sends her menacing letters letting her know she’s being watched. Things escalate quickly though as he starts to do unspeakable things to her without her knowledge. It’s a truly disturbing movie with some incredible performances. Like so many of the others on this list, it’s not easy to watch, but that doesn’t make it any less brilliant.
Honorable Mention: The Cable Guy
After all those serious stalker movies, I thought it would be only right to mention one of the few comedies that still does this micro-genre justice. Jim Carry takes a crack at terrorizing Matthew Broderick over unrequired friendship. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still creepy. It’s just pretty funny too.
Hopefully, this list of stalker movies will help you understand just how terrifying having a stalker can be. Of course, there were a ton of great films that didn’t make this list, like Misery (whose villain was more obsessed with characters from a book series than their author). So, if there’s a great stalker movie I missed, leave a comment below. As always, I’ll be updating this list as new stalker movies are released and you can always check back to see how the rankings changed. Until next time, be safe and keep your deadbolts locked at night, Stars & Popcorn fans.