ALONE WITH HER

Alone With Her is a tense, well-shot little thriller in the vein of "fatal attraction" youth flicks like Fear, The Crush, and Swimfan. The difference here is that the psycho stalker uses low-tech surveillance equipment to worm his way into his victim's life, making the film as much peep show as creep show. It's effective on both fronts, though it suffers a bit from its compact running time. At just over 80 minutes, Alone With Her sometimes feels underdeveloped and under-populated. Though we see much of the movie through stalker Doug's (Colin Hanks) eyes—or via the many cameras he's hidden in pretty young Amy's (Ana Claudia Talancon) L.A. apartment—we get very little physical or emotional sense of this nerdy textbook salesman. He's a scary guy because of what he does, not because of who he is. Only at the end do we learn a tiny bit about what drives Doug, but it's an underwhelming reveal.

Amy, on the other hand, is a much more vivid character, thanks in great part to the natural, movingly candid performance of Mexican-born beauty Talancon. As played, she's the ideal object of obsession—gorgeous, kind, vulnerable, and very much alone. She's Psycho's Marion Crane without the stolen money and motel room (not for nothing do we see Amy showering as often as we do). An aspiring artist with an ex-boyfriend and a new, unsatisfying beau (Jonathan Trent), Amy lives the caffeinated, club-hopping life of a 20-something big-city chick. But unlike, say, her mouthy best friend, Jennifer (Jordana Spiro), Amy retains a layer of sadness and self-conscious propriety beneath her sexy surface. She's a good person who deserves better than what she's getting—if she can just stay alive long enough to get it.

If anything, Amy comes off a bit too good, a bit too trusting of the sweaty and awkward Doug, who wins her over with his "coincidental" love of the same movies and music he spies her enjoying. With the help of his video surveillance, Doug learns everything he needs in order to takes over Amy's life, and he repeatedly comes to her rescue after causing one disaster after another to befall her. But Amy just thinks she's going through a bad run as she finds herself in a push-pull relationship with "white knight" Doug. Unfortunately, Doug stays an unappealing character throughout; writer/director Eric Nicholas never allows the slightly geeky Hanks to suave it up and become a credible "suitor." Despite his attentiveness to the needy Amy, Doug practically wears a neon sign around his neck that reads: damaged goods. No matter how susceptible she may be, Amy's just too hip to buy into Doug beyond their first "accidental" meeting on her daily coffee run.

At the same time, because Amy seems open to getting to know Doug pretty much from the start, he could've easily wooed her without going all psycho intruder. You had her at hello, you nut! Then again, if Doug were rational enough to realize that, he probably wouldn't have been stalking poor Amy to begin with, and there'd be no movie.

Script issues aside, filmmaker Nicholas shows definite promise, and overall he's done an impressive job making the most out of what was surely a low budget. He also doesn't overdo the hidden video bit, avoiding unnecessary trickery as he alternates between Doug's surveillance cameras and his own. Nicholas has created a modest, effective cautionary tale, one that's certain to make female viewers think twice before chatting up a stranger at the local Starbucks.