The Perfect Stalker (2016 TV Movie) User Reviews

An Average Though Watchable And Enjoyable Psychological Thriller

[P3n-E-W1s3 · 6/10 · 17 January 2018]

In this film, we have the story of a woman supposedly suffering from HPD - Histrionic Personality Disorder. And the opening sequence, except for the psychiatrist scene, sets the rest of the film up brilliantly. The trouble with the psychiatrist scene is that it all feels too staged. It's quickly edited and after only one session the shrink knows what's going to happen - she appears more a fortune teller than a doctor. It's the way this is delivered and shot that made me cringe inside. It all feels like it's only been added to the film to make everything black and white for the viewer. Give your audience credit, they probably could have figured out the storyline without this horrid scene.

However, that said the rest of the film bears no resemblance to this scene. The director, Curtis Crawford is pretty adept at using lighting, camera work, and location to set the scenes with atmosphere and tension. Though a couple of scenes could have been a little longer to build the tension a little more. It's a shame that he lets the pace slow down a little near the climax when it should be climbing to its zenith.

The acting is above average and I have to say that there is a brilliant scene where Grace (Savre) cuddles up with her man, Robert (Brown), and the look on her face is just so creepy and chilling - awesome scene, nice and powerful. This is one of those movies where the actors really do believe that there are no small parts, for they all give their best, which adds to the power and believability of the story.

As for the story, it's been done before and though there's nothing really new it's still a strong tale. Yes, it might have been nice to see a little more about Grace's background. Not that she may have been through some trauma which has lead her down this path, but of her relationship with her husband as it's evident at the start of the movie he really loves her. A little bit more background leading up to her condition and his death would have made the story stronger. If the writers could have added a few lesser used scenarios and twists this again could have made it stronger.

However, this is a watchable and enjoyable thriller which I would recommend to lovers of this genre and to those who haven't watched this style of film before. If there also happens to be little on to watch when it's raining or snowing outside, this isn't a bad one for a duvet day.

The Perfect Explanation

[wes-connors · 6/10 · 4 January 2017]

Highly-strung Danielle Savre (as Grace) receives some bad news. Her husband feels their sessions with a psychiatrist are not working and he wants to permanently end the marriage. Prone to spontaneous temper tantrums, Ms. Savre has something called HPD. HPD is short for Histrionic Personality Disorder (looked it up). A tragic mishap results in Savre moving from her small town to the relatively big city of Philadelphia. She wants to make a fresh start. Savre quickly goes grocery shopping and sees a strikingly good-looking older man, with great hair. The man is successful professor and writer Jefferson Brown (as Robert Harris). No, he doesn't sport the trendy "neatly trimmed beard" look, but the hair is perfect. Savre feigns dropping her groceries in order to meet him...

Savre wants to seduce and marry Mr. Brown, but there is one problem. Brown loves his live-in girlfriend Krista Morin (as Erin Stevens)...

"The Perfect Stalker" scores points with its early reference to what they call HPD, which is an honest to goodness (or badness) condition. This helps explain the hundreds (or soon to be) of unhinged "Lifetime" TV movie characters. They demonstrate "erratic behavior, unwillingness to accept criticism," are "overly dramatic, emotional," and, best of all (for TV movie purposes), they act out sexually after becoming obsessed with a targeted mate. This is the basic plot for these stories, which are sometimes "based on a true story." Now, it all makes sense. Curtis Crawford and his crew are responsible for dozens of these formula movies. This one is above average, due to a well-balanced but necessarily unhinged lead performance by Savre. Her last attempt is a titillating delight.

****** The Perfect Stalker (12/30/2016) Curtis Crawford ~ Danielle Savre, Jefferson Brown, Krista Morin, John Koensgen

Gracie's Drastic Mood Swings

[lavatch · 5/10 · 16 June 2020]

Gracie Winston, who suffers from a bad case of HPD (Histrionic Personality Disorder), is starting her life over after murdering her first husband Harvey. The distinguished psychiatrist Dr. Highland had diagnosed Gracie with a severe form of HPD, wherein she is "acting out" her delusions. For the doctor, the situation will only get more serious without therapy. "The Perfect Stalker" depicts just how bad it can get.

After arriving her new location, Gracie bumps into a man outside a grocery store and intentionally drops her shopping bag in order to meet him. He is Professor Robert Harris, who teaches pop culture at Horton College. Gracie is instantly besotted with Robert and proceeds to turn his life into a living hell in stalking him.

A weakness of the screenplay was in the absence of symptoms of Gracie's mood swings after she kills Harvey. For most of the film, her behavior was on a fairly normal curve, as she briefly held a responsible job and seemed uncharacteristically steady in her social manners. It was as if she had transformed into a different character with a far more serious pathology that the HPD.

While the performers all turned in solid work in their character interpretations, the film was extremely unpleasant due to the excessive violence. Gracie's first husband, Harvey Winston, is shocked when his wife flips the breaker on as he is changing a light fixture. He falls off a ladder to his death. Robert's caring fiancée Erin befriends Gracie when she moves into the neighborhood. For her kindness, Erin is murdered by Gracie with a tire iron. For the trifecta, Gracie rounds things off by killing the jovial security expert Wayne, Gracie's neighbor, who is pushed down a stairwell by Gracie, breaking his neck.

All of those deaths added up to a depressing and bleak scenario of heartbreak for Robert Harris, a decent man who wanted to lend a helping hand to his neighbor, and suffered the slings and arrows of a complete psychopath.

The Perfect Bomb

[geoffox-766-418467 · 18 April 2017]

By all mean this is absolutely the worst ever for LMN. I blame the writer and some of the actors. This female kills her husband and then goes stalking another woman's husband by doing all she can to destroy their marriage. By pretending she is being stalked, which no one in their right mind would ever want to touch this dame, she convinces the husband of her story. He is as dumb as they come making it easy for her to conquer him. And wifey is clueless to what's going on. Then there is the knocking off those that are on to her, which you can pre- see this coming. It was the husband I found intolerable. He is so stupidly unaware of the plot when it is staring him right in the face. Why does LMN always make the male actor the idiot?

All the conflicts with the man and his wife is the perfect set up for the perfect stalker to enter the picture. Interesting that the couple have no children. The bitch female is predictable that it becomes boring to keep watching her posturing and obvious behavior. I give this a rating of (barfing). And in one film I'd love to see the female get kicked in the groin.

Totally missable

[phd_travel · 2/10 · 10 September 2018]

At first there is a watchable build up as the wacko in the title decides she loves this married man. She proceeds tp eliminate the Mrs and act the damsel in distress. As she gradually worms her way into his life,things start to fizzle. The grand finale is such a non event - it really felt like a waste of time,

Don't waste your time and life on this one

[Sean_Biggins · 1/10 · 23 September 2018]

I started watching this on HBO and thought "This must be another terrible Canadian tax write-off film shot in Vancouver". Well I was, it was shot in Ottawa of all places. But why even make a film like this? You're honestly better off watching an old rerun of Matlock or Columbo than wasting your life watching stuff like this.

Run of the Lifetime mill

[mgconlan-1 · 5/10 · 12 February 2017]

After From Straight A's to XXX Lifetime reran a production from 2016 called "The Perfect Stalker," which — surprise! — wasn't written by Christine Conradt but by Bryan Dick, though the director was Conradt's frequent collaborator Curtis James Crawford. What also makes it unusual for a Lifetime movie is that the title character doesn't exist. Actually "The Perfect Stalker" might have more accurately been called "The Perfect Widow," since though Conradt isn't involved it does follow her formula of stories about people who are normal on the surface but have a deep, dark secret somewhere, and who worm their way into the lives of nice, unsuspecting people until their real natures come out and … "The Perfect Stalker" begins in Ohio, where Harvey Winston (Scott Gibson) is getting more and more worried about the mood swings and diva-ish outbursts of his wife Grace (Danielle Savre). The two of them attend therapy sessions together and their therapist diagnoses Grace with HPD (Histrionic Personality Disorder), and Harvey lays down the law to his wife: either she faces up to her problems and accepts "treatment" for this, or he's leaving. Only Grace has a third alternative in mind: one afternoon, while Harvey is on a ladder fixing the wiring on a light fixture in their home, Grace sneaks over to the circuit-breaker box, turns the power back on, and electrocutes him. She's able, apparently, to convince the police Harvey's death was accidental, because the next we see of her she's driving to Philadelphia (though, this being a Lifetime movie, Philadelphia is actually "played" by Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) and re-establishing herself in a nice, quiet neighborhood with a job as a legal transcriber and a rental home nearby to where Robert Harris (Jefferson Brown, who has an odd resemblance to Lyle Lovett) lives with his girlfriend Erin Stevens (Krista Morin).

Robert is a local professor and a published writer; he teaches the cultural history of the 1960's and that's also what his book is about — you can tell from the big peace sign on the cover — and writer Dick variously describes Harris's book as a novel and a nonfiction history (the latter seems more likely). Of course, the moment Grace runs into Robert — she spills groceries from a blue bag in a shopping-mall parking lot and he helps her pick them up — she's immediately smitten with him and bound and determined to do anything to get him away from Erin and in her arms (and more). Indeed, there's a hot soft-core porn scene between Danielle Savre and Jefferson Brown — though of course it turns out only to be a fantasy of hers. Grace is helped in her campaign by a couple of factors: one is that Erin works for a major biotech company called "Mensoto" (were the producers worried that the real Monsanto would sue?) and her job calls on her to leave town a lot, which gives Robert plenty of time in that big house to himself with Grace ready and willing to comfort him in any way he might desire. Her other unwitting ally is Wayne McNeely (John Koensgen), a middle-aged neighborhood watch busybody who one night warns Grace that he's spotted a mysterious prowler in the neighborhood. That gives Grace her big idea of how she can get Robert: she'll tell him she's being stalked by the prowler and she needs his help to keep from being victimized by him. At one point she even covers herself in dirt to make it look like the prowler has assaulted her. "The Perfect Stalker" is an O.K. Lifetime drama, neither better nor worse than the common run of them, and while it got a better review on IMDb.com than I would have expected mainly because the reviewer was quite taken with Danielle Sayre and her performance — he also gave writer Dick points for giving us a real mental illness Grace is suffering from instead of telling us she's just f---ing crazy — I wasn't especially impressed or unimpressed by this one.

One of the better Lifetime thrillers

[mjanssens26 · 8/10 · 13 April 2021]

The actors in this make it worth the watch. I nearly passed this up as I thought it would be a dud but am glad I gave it a chance. I thought it'd be a boring psychological thriller, but instead it's a decent thriller with some good twists and turns. Remember, it's a Lifetime flick so don't set your expectations too high but for a TV film, it's a fun ride.

Quite good, really!

[Chartreuse1 · 9/10 · 14 July 2020]

We caught this on Lifetime last night and it was very well acted with a strong script. Grace, the lead, has HPD and she kills her husband and moves to another town; In the parking lot of a supermarket she meets her Prince Charming, Robert, who is already seeing Grace's neighbor, Erin. Grace must have Robert at any cost and hatches a devious plan to get closer to him. Highly recommend this one and would watch again!

Meh...Watch once, but if you skip it, you'll be fine too.

[CranberriAppl · 8 February 2022]

First off, the first scene seems disjointed once the movie got going. It seems like her obsession with Robert began with him, and her problems with her husband in the beginning were entirely different. This movie would be better if her illness was more fleshed out. She should have had a therapist or at least someone somewhere that knew who she really was.

Grace wasn't a fun psycho. A lot of her behavior made me cringe. It was also rather unbelievable that Erin didn't pick up on the obvious. In these movies, usually the object of obsession doesn't get it until it's too late and someone is hurt or dead, but she was so obvious and over the top right away. It's also not lost on me that the movie likely made Erin a gf instead of a wife, so that perhaps it would be less cringe for her to make a move on him since he's not a widower. Well lemme tell you, it was JUST as cringe. Were her actions only over the top to the audience? How could he not have been even slightly uncomfortable by her aggression?

I finished it, but I won't rewatch. Can't believe I'm saying this but Lifetime has much better "obsessed" movies.

It's the woman from Station 19

[jn-62820 · 10/10 · 8 June 2021]

Before she starred in the fire station drama Station 19 Danielle savre starred in this 2016 tv movie.

Title song tv beginning the perfect stalker

[franck-torreano · 10/10 · 5 January 2021]

Hi what is the title of the song and the song at the beginning of the telefilm