Fatal Affair

To begin with this movie has to be the most contrived overacted badly directed movie ever. Silly nonsensical plot that has so many loopholes and mistakes it can't be taken seriously. The massage scene is a laugh riot to watch. The fact this creep can just walk in at his leisure is another funny fact. The actors were dreadful. I blame the script for this. But never having been a fan of C Thomas Howell, he was the worst. He overacted the entire film. Comes off as a weakling husband against the hard hearted wife played by Maxim Roy. Then there's the villain played by Jay Underwood, a Howell look a-like, who seems to go around the movie with a smirk on his face. That's the extent of his acting. Mark Camacho was the only redeeming actor in this film. He managed to make a few realistic moments along the way.

In this Canadian produced film released in the United States as STALKER, (C. Thomas Howell) plays as Mack Maddox who faces payment of dues for a one-night stand with health club instructor Justine when, after she is murdered and Mack is chosen as a juror for the case of the slain woman, his entire existence becomes greatly complicated, with his marriage, vocation as an advertising executive, and eventually the safekeeping of his family all being in jeopardy. When the jurors are shown crime scene photographs of the homicide victim by the prosecuting attorney, Mack recognizes her as his short-term paramour, and after the suspect, the murdered woman's husband Ezra, performed by Jay Underwood, is released because of a mistrial, he begins to believe that Mack was in fact his deceased wife's lover, and stalks Mack, his wife Laura and his daughter as well, apparently with an objective of killing all of them as retribution for Mack's brief lapse into sin with Justine. The story is bewhiskered and laden with numerous flaws of logic, but in spite of this lack of originality, production characteristics are of high quality, in particular effectively moody scoring by Normand Corbeil, telling compositions from cinematographer Georges Archambault, top-flight production design contributed by Paola Ridolfi, and the crisp editing of Arthur Tarnowski, all under able direction from Marc Grenier. Although Howell stiffly overacts throughout, Maxim Roy as Laura is a standout for her splendidly natural turn. Grenier's pacing control is strongly evident from the outset, while the final scene is one of the work's best due to a spare use of dialogue; with a less hackneyed storyline, this film would have been more noteworthy.

This Canadian made (though set in the United States) thriller does have several things going for it. While it's a low budget production, never at any point does the movie look really cheap (and, thankfully, it's missing that tacky "Canadian look" found in many Canadian movies.) The acting is also pretty good, with even C. Thomas Howell giving a decent performance. Script-wise, the movie does get you interested enough so that you'll stick to the end to see what happens. However, while the script has that aforementioned strength, it has a few weaknesses. It takes a long time to make the bad guy a significant threat - I'm not sure if the bad guy has any dialogue in the first 40 minutes, and he's hardly seen during that time! And the script is lacking in surprises and twists - much of the movie is very familiar. Still, if it's a slow night and nothing else is on, you could do worse.