Directed by:
Megan GriffithsScreenplay:
Megan GriffithsCinematography:
Quyen TranCast:
Bellamy Young, Lou Diamond Phillips, Louis Herthum, Jennifer Lafleur, Bernardo Badillo, Zoe McLane, Mark Kelly, Gino Lee, Janine Larina, Annalisa Cochrane (more)Plots(1)
Megan Griffiths combines her always-compelling direction as well as her personal, fearful memories of the actual events to this Los Angeles true-crime thriller. Based on the real, notorious serial killer, Richard Ramirez, The Night Stalker follows Kit, a female attorney, who is desperately trying to obtain a confession from the murderer, who is currently sitting on death row in San Quentin. By the time he was 25, Richard Ramirez was responsible for at least 13 murders from 1984 to 1985, breaking into homes late at night to assault and kill his victims, earning him the appropriate nickname, "The Night Stalker" from the Los Angeles Times. He eventually died from lymphoma as he awaited his execution in 2013. This psychological thriller focuses on both characters, Kit (Bellamy Young) and Ramirez (Lou Diamond Phillips), and their impact on one another as Kit dives into Ramirez's past, and confronts her own, in order to secure a confession and save an innocent man from death row. (Seattle International Film Festival)
(more)Reviews (1)
The Night Stalker is a solid TV movie about the dialogue-based relationship between a serial killer and the journalist who visits him in prison, and about a “fragile woman’s” fascination with evil in the form of an attractive “male spider”. The subject matter is similar to the main storyline of The Silence of the Lambs, except in this case it is about a real killer and inspired by the female fans he gained after his arrest thanks to his masculine magnetism (he even got married in prison). In order to understand and appreciate the film, it is necessary to know the story of Richard Ramirez, the horrifying nature of his actions, and his later cynical reflection on them. Lou Diamond Phillips does a good job of portraying Ramirez and the film also works in the psychological aspect, as it reveal the reasons for the journalist’s weakness for the killer’s tantalising, animal magnetism.
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