Cyberstalker (2012)

Cyberstalker also known as Offline is a made for cable Lifetime television film starring Mischa Barton who plays Aidan whose parents were murdered 13 years earlier. The killer was never caught which still taxes the detective in charge. Now she spends time as a reclusive artist but it seems the cyberstalker is back to terrorise her.The film is low budget, quickly shot, formulaic but rather watchable if you switch your brain offline. The culprit could only be the characters we have been introduced to which could be the detective, her new boyfriend, the Svengali gallery owner or the wheelchair bound computer expert newly employed by the police.I reckon there is no need for Columbo or Sherlock to solve this whodunit. There is plenty of silliness as our cyberstalker can hack into and control traffic lights for example. Still Lifetime know which audience to aim their films at, its female friendly with enough thrills to keep you mildly entertained.

(I'm not sure this is a spoiler but don't want to take chances.)***************Nothing in this movie makes sense. The stalker breaks in by decoding the burglar alarm, lies down in the girl's bed, drops a cell phone that somehow clues the parents (with a few numbers) that the alarm system has been breached. He then emerges to kill the girl's parents and in a flash he's gone.Next we go to a scene 13 years later where a detective is still struggling to solve what would have been a very cold case. And the home invader, well, he's still at it.Did the script writer expect us to believe that a cell phone app could turn a series of deadbolt locks at the apartment of a tech-phobe who wouldn't get near anything related to electronics? Yes, we're talking plain old brass deadbolt locks. Step right up suckers. See him turn them from the outside using a cell phone! And, yes, he manages murder the woman's only friend (her therapist) by messing with the walk light at a busy intersection. Another cell phone app, it seems. You'd think the lead character would have reacted with some sadness. Well, don't expect logic here.It took at least a month to film this piece of pure rubbish. How do I know? The lead actress's hair is blonde to the roots in some scenes and has a one-centimeter outgrowth of untreated hair in others. That takes a month.A budget of under $2 million is low for movies, I know. But it should be enough for an $8 bottle of hair dye. Never mind. Not worth it.Worst TV movie I've seen outside the intentionally-bad SciFi channel stuff. Ghastly awful.

I'm a sucker for these Lifetime popcorn movies and Cyberstalker is another fun one. I used to think it was cool to have good looking guys stalking me online, now not so much LOL. Dan Levy as the ultimate computer nerd puts in a great performance as does the dreamy Marco Grazzini as Ms OC's boyfriend.I found myself yelling at the screen "Don't go in there" a couple times, which I'm sure freaked out my neighbors haha. I was torn on the whodunnit, still always thinking that it was going to turn back to the art dealer (great interrogation scene performance by the way). The last shot I wasn't sure if they were setting it up for a sequel or just saying that we're all being watched all the time. Ambiguous can be good I guess. It definitely got me to check the locks on my door a couple extra times before I went to bed.As most of these movies, it suffers from budget issues but that's the nature of the LMN beast. Where it lacks in production value, it makes up for in good old suspenseful fun.

Based (or maybe inspired by is more appropriate) on a true story, Cyberstalker puts a modern spin on a traditional Fatal Attraction type story as we find a man obsessed using the internet and technology to stalk, harass, and ultimately kill Mischa Barton's character Aidan.To me, it was reminiscent of Untraceable with Diane Lane but on a smaller scale. Surely shot in Canada, Cyberstalker has its ups and downs and a few good twists. Notable standout performance are put in by Marco Grazzini and Mark Caven.It was better than I expected it to be and is worth the watch if you like TV thrillers or mysteries.