Sadly Over-hyped

I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

****SPOILERS**** Trying to put her late husband Alan's, Frank Schopion, tragic death in a hit and run accident behind her Chicago environmental designer Susan Brace, Nastassja Kinski, meets financial whiz Kevin Markson, Stewart Bick, who's the new head of her companies finance department and it's love at first sight. Smart handsome and on the ball Kevin is everything that Susan was looking for, in the last two years, in a man since the death of her hubby Alan. What Susan was soon to realize is that with Kevin came along his old flame Leslie Seeward, ???, who been obsessed with the guy since he stood her up and Left her out in the cold a few months ago!At first using the mail to pester and harass the couple and even going so far as breaking into their apartment and scrawling threatening messages on the mirrors and windows Leslie later starts to use strong arm tactics in actually physically attacking the pair especially her rival for Kevin's affection Susan Brace! At one point hitting her from behind with a shovel at the local cemetery where Susan went to pay her respects to her late mother and then stabbing Susan in the sauna at a local Chicago gym that she's a member of! Things get so out of hand that Susan hires without Kevin's knowledge a private detective Martin Howell, Gordon Pinsent, to find out who's causing all this trouble for her and Kevin.Whoever this Leslie Seeward is she goes a step farther in murdering Susan's boss Peggy, Victoria Show, whom she mistook her for Susan when Peggy was checking out her work in the office after closing hours. It's later that PI Howell finds out the truth about Leslie Seeward in that she's an escapee from a mental institution who's also wanted for murdering a motorist who picked her up hitch hiking on the West Coast! That little bit of information ended up costing Howell his life with an outraged and crazed Leslie being the cause of it! ***MAJOR SPOILERS*** Unknow to Susan and us in the audience the killer had set her up and placed her just where he or she wanted to. Where he or she can both end up murdering Susan and at the same time faking in being a victim in the crime as well. It was Susan's kid sister Justin, Maxim Roy, who just broke up with her abusive husband Jack, Edward Yankie, who unexpectedly fouled up the killer's plans. That's by her showing up in the right place, the Markson's apartment, at the right time and it almost cost Justin her life in doing it! Great surprise ending where the killer comes out of the shadows and goes into action in attacking and trying to murder a shocked and at the same time feisty Susan. What turned out to be a far bigger surprise is that the killer,after being dispatched from the scene, turned out to be as close to Susan as her husband Kevin was without her ever realizing it! That's until it was almost too late for her!

A pretty good "who's stalking her" movie. Nastassja Kinski is very good as usual. The other acting is solid as well; the husbands,the sister, the colleague, the private detective. The protagonist, Susan, is a successful designer who loses her beloved husband on a rainy night in a tragic accident. She has inherited money from her father, including a trust fund for her unreliable sister. She doles out the money to her in small increments over time. The sister resents this but is married to an abusive jerk who spends her money on bad investments in get quick rich schemes. Susan consults with a bright and charming investment adviser and begins dating him. They take a trip to Las Vegas and get married. Then a mysterious woman begins stalking her. Her husband suspects its may be an unstable former girlfriend. The stalking escalates to harassment and attacks. Decent mystery, but with one inexplicable flaw. I won't describe the flaw so as not to spoil the mystery. Would love to inquire with the screenwriter about it though. Suspense builds effectively and there are a few startling moments. Very tame in terms of language and gore. Very economical exposition of the plot and characters, almost no wasted moments. Some very visually interesting sets and effective editing.

A cheaply done made-for-TV feature I started off thinking why should I bother continuing, but eventually it started to pull me in even though it ends on a predictable flutter of hysteria with its clunky revelation.Environmental designer Susan Brice lives a lonely life, where the death of her husband two year earlier still haunts her mind. But she overcomes that when she meets Kevin, a financial adviser and the two seem to hit it off. The romance hits sky high as they elope when in Las Vegas, but suddenly from nowhere she becomes a target of a stalker (dressed in a black wide brim hat and trench coat) that really has it in for her. Leaving unpleasant phone messages, spying on her, petty vandalism but then it gets even more dangerous as there are attempts on her life. Kevin suddenly reveals to the police and finally Susan that it might an unstable ex-girlfriend seeking revenge.Small-scale, textbook stuff ensured. The red herrings spring up to only be cancelled out with non-effective attempts of drummed out suspense and simmering in the background an oozing, silk laid jazz score. The material is kind of all over the place in what it truly wants to be, but still manages to be quite captivating and the static direction while technically efficient limps along until its noisy, but emotionally starved climax. However the camera-work has some elasticity to it. The fetching Nastassja Kinski gives an earnest performance in the lead. Maxim Roy is wholesomely good in her role as Susan's beaten sister Justine and Gordon Pinsent eases in with his role of a classical music loving private detective.A slow, but mildly tolerable and engaging made-for-TV mystery thriller.

Spoilers herein.I think this was a made for TeeVee production that somehow was made financially attractive to Blockbuster to stock. It is the old Diabolique play, arranged by the greedy husband. You can see it a mile away. What attracted me was the name of Ms Kinski -- just as it was supposed to.Here is very clear proof that at least some great beauty and effectiveness in acting comes not from the actor. In Polanski's hands (literally we understand), she was hypnotizing. Here, she is talentless and incidentally unlovely.You can have some fun with this film, though. It is so formulaic and predictable, it is so composed of prefabbed parts, that you can readily imagine how you could improve it. How you could increase the ambiguities of perception; how that could reflect on the multiple red herrings (here never red enough). I couldn't help comparing this to `Fifth Floor,' which had similar production values. It wasn't great, but it had a real actress at risk, and some rather more competent pasting together of found parts.