I Am a Stalker

It's not the glossy true crime documentary we've grown to expect from Netflix, but the simplicity of it allows us to appreciate how truly delusional stalkers are and pay close attention to what they say and how they say it. If you pay close attention you're able to identify the subtle tactics and manipulation these people employ.

The stories are truly chilling and the really made me put myself into the victims's shoes and the unimaginable burden of living in constant fear. It brings the message home that there are people like this out there who simply won't let things go and the notion of that is very scary.

I started watching this on Netflix because I work in Mental Health and thought it would be interesting to hear directly from the Stalkers. It's chilling how their mind works. Chilling, disturbing and you can see how delusional they are, and how far they can get in their activities and still excuse themselves of it and not accept accountability.

The reality of just how many stalker are out there, known stalkers, vs how many people haven't yet acted on the impulses is scary.

Even though this is an American series and the laws are different there, this is an informative series that people should watch to become informed, to learn how to recognize the signs and steps to take to protect yourself.

I am only part way through it and have watched at least one episode where the stalkers were women. Not common, but they presented themselves in an entirely different way from the male stalkers.

I recommend it.

While this series and the "I'm A Killer" series are interesting and heartbreaking, how is no one editing these before they aired? Grammar is terrible, and the text on the screen is out if sequence. "I'm A Stalker", "Close To Death" , the victim clearly states she was in hiding but only left her house to go to class, then the text on the screen says "while living in hiding Sadie decided to resume her nursing studies". Duh, she said she was going to class. The images of houses don't match the story, she is talking about living in an apartment and they show several different houses? In episode "A Family Stalker" text on the screen says, "will be eligible to apply for parole FROM 2028", should be "will be eligible to apply for parole in 2028". Lots of these grammatical errors occurred in " I'm A Killer" too. For a Netflix doc this is poor. Fire your editors. The people who participated in these stories deserve better.

This documentary series certainly draws attention to the crime of aggravated stalking and the paltry sentences issued to perpetrators in these cases. It's clear that laws differ state by state, and that punishment for stalking is all over the place.

While there is an interesting format of providing both the sides of the victims and their incarcerated offenders, there was an opportunity missed in determining whether the parties viewed past events differently. Interviewers could have played a greater role in challenging the offenders' statements. There also seemed to be a great deal of missing information, as though the documentarians wanted to get by with as few interviews as possible. Where are the attorneys, judges, juries in these cases? Were there just too few individuals' perspectives to seek to make this a richer discussion?

The whole series might have been better off as a podcast, where anonymity could have been kept and B roll of houses and letters in mailboxes (the same shots used more than once) and, strangely, close-ups of people's hands could have been avoided.

This could have been a great analysis of the types of stalking behaviours, but instead it was a superficial, almost reality tv kind of offering where we see stalkers and those being stalked remembering their experiences (valid, of course). Why the need to stretch it into 8 episodes - I cannot fathom, when it could have easily been condensed into a documentary film or a miniseries with much more professional insight into what actually happens in these disturbing situations. Was hoping to learn something new from this, but ended up just watching iterations of the same thing without any in depth analysis of the phenomenon of stalking.