The first of last night's two Lifetime "premiere" movies was "Stalker's Prey," listed on IMDb.com as "Hunter's Cove" (presumably a working title, since Hunter's Cove is the name of the beach town where it takes place). Directed by Colin Theys from a script by John Doolan, it's a pretty typical by-the-numbers Lifetime piece in which high-school senior Laura Wilcox (Saxon Sharbino) and her younger sister Chloe (Alexis Larivere) are being raised by their mom Sandy (Cynthia Gibb) as a single parent. Dad is still alive but he hovers over the action as a sort of irritating non-presence and is never seen as a character, though at one point an argument between Sandy and Laura establishes that it was their father who left their mom, not the other way around. In the opening scene, we see Laura and her boyfriend Nicholas Jordan (Luke Slattery) making out and getting ready to have sex in Nicholas's pickup truck — a real cool restored oldie with a double cab — when mom comes home early from an outing and catches them. She orders Laura into the house and tells her she's not to see Nicholas anymore — it becomes clear she just plain doesn't like him and doesn't regard him as a suitable mate for her daughter — and when she resists, Sandy tells Laura she's grounded for the weekend even though it's her birthday and she was counting on being able to go out to celebrate. Laura duly sneaks out, and equally unsurprisingly her sister Chloe rats her out to mom; where Laura is going is to the local beach with her friend Bre Hendricks (Gillian Rose) — the first name is pronounced "Brie," like the cheese — and the two end up on a boat called "Open Wide" (as in what, Laura's legs?), from which they dive to do a swim in the local cove.
Only there's a shark prowling the water (and director Theys can't resist some vaguely "Jaws"-ish musical themes while this is happening) and it attacks our young lovebirds: Nicholas is killed by the shark (a real pity because we don't want to lose the cutest guy in the film at the end of the first act!) but Laura is rescued by Bruce Kane (Mason Dye), of whom we'd also got some choice man-meat views in swim trunks and nothing else. The gimmick is that once Bruce, the son of a local City Councilmember, sees Laura he's instantly smitten and believes she is THE ONE for him from then on — and this being a stalker story his affections get creepier and creepier, including taking on a job baby-sitting for Laura's sister Chloe and getting a key to their house, ostensibly so he can show up whenever Sandy needs a baby-sitter but really to show up whenever he wants Laura — whom he makes it to bed with once (at a garden party given by his dad to raise money for his re-election campaign — Bruce tricks Laura into going by saying he merely wants an escort but he turns it into a real date, necking with her by the backyard swimming pool to the strains of the 1913 song "You Made Me Love You" (I wasn't sure, but I think the singer was Patsy Cline) and ultimately having sex with her. As the film progresses (like a disease), Bruce's actions get weirder and weirder.
The big problem with "Stalker's Prey" is the big problem with a lot of Lifetime's thrillers: not content to keep Bruce's villainy within reasonable and believable bounds, writer Doolan makes him a figure of almost preternatural evil. At times the moral of this story seems to be, "When your mom grounds you because she doesn't like your boyfriend, listen to her: otherwise, if you sneak out, he's going to be killed by a shark and you'll be rescued by a cute guy who'll become an obsessive stalker and threaten to kill you" — though one part of Doolan's script I liked was the irony that Laura's mom can't stand the nice boy she's dating at the opening and loves the one who turns out to be the demented stalker who nearly kills her. Other than that, "Stalker's Prey" was pretty typical Lifetime fare, blessed with two cute guys we get to see in hot states of undress but preceding along well-traveled routes to a pretty predictable ending.
Only there's a shark prowling the water (and director Theys can't resist some vaguely "Jaws"-ish musical themes while this is happening) and it attacks our young lovebirds: Nicholas is killed by the shark (a real pity because we don't want to lose the cutest guy in the film at the end of the first act!) but Laura is rescued by Bruce Kane (Mason Dye), of whom we'd also got some choice man-meat views in swim trunks and nothing else. The gimmick is that once Bruce, the son of a local City Councilmember, sees Laura he's instantly smitten and believes she is THE ONE for him from then on — and this being a stalker story his affections get creepier and creepier, including taking on a job baby-sitting for Laura's sister Chloe and getting a key to their house, ostensibly so he can show up whenever Sandy needs a baby-sitter but really to show up whenever he wants Laura — whom he makes it to bed with once (at a garden party given by his dad to raise money for his re-election campaign — Bruce tricks Laura into going by saying he merely wants an escort but he turns it into a real date, necking with her by the backyard swimming pool to the strains of the 1913 song "You Made Me Love You" (I wasn't sure, but I think the singer was Patsy Cline) and ultimately having sex with her. As the film progresses (like a disease), Bruce's actions get weirder and weirder.
The big problem with "Stalker's Prey" is the big problem with a lot of Lifetime's thrillers: not content to keep Bruce's villainy within reasonable and believable bounds, writer Doolan makes him a figure of almost preternatural evil. At times the moral of this story seems to be, "When your mom grounds you because she doesn't like your boyfriend, listen to her: otherwise, if you sneak out, he's going to be killed by a shark and you'll be rescued by a cute guy who'll become an obsessive stalker and threaten to kill you" — though one part of Doolan's script I liked was the irony that Laura's mom can't stand the nice boy she's dating at the opening and loves the one who turns out to be the demented stalker who nearly kills her. Other than that, "Stalker's Prey" was pretty typical Lifetime fare, blessed with two cute guys we get to see in hot states of undress but preceding along well-traveled routes to a pretty predictable ending.
