Stalked Within (2022)

(On TV, November 2022) Oh yeaaaah, BET has updated its slate of original thrillers as part of its “Shocktober” event, and Stalked Within is one of the new players on the lineup. (If you’re worried you missed it, don’t fret—BET only has something like 50 movies in its playlist, so you’re sure to catch it again a few dozen times over the next year.)  Better yet—Stalked Within is exactly the kind of ridiculous over-the-top nonsense I’m specifically craving from a BET original thriller. Pitting the beautiful Megan Tandy against the very Caucasian Wes Brown, this thriller follows a young black woman as she is harassed by a home security operator. With access to her home, omnipresent security cameras and fancy technological gadgets, the evil white guy escalates his infatuation to stalking and violent abuse. It ends exactly how you think it’s going to end. Clearly playing to its target audience, Stalked Within doesn’t make a shred of sense, but who cares? It plays with the rules of the subgenre and does so with sufficient glee that it’s practically impossible to take seriously. (You may think this is a problem, but it’s not—at this level of budgeting and filmmaking, it’s much better if the film can be seen with an ironic distance.) It’s really not an accident if the protagonist and her friends are darker-skinned, whereas the antagonist is whitey-white—again, BET knows its audience and writer-director Glen Owen makes it sufficiently ridiculous that even white guys such as myself can get in on the fun. In other words: Stalked Within is predictable generic trash, but it’s exactly what I wanted. Good job, BET.