John Jarratt went to the pub to promote his new film StalkHer, touring a range of Australian outback hotels where prerelease screenings were followed by Q&A sessions and karaoke competitions. At least he got the choice of venue right, given audiences will want a stiff drink – probably several – if they manage to sit through all of the veteran actor’s behind–the–camera debut.
This rancid battle–of–the–sexes chamber piece, co-directed and co-produced by Jarratt and Kaarin Fairfax (who both star in the lead roles), is billed as a “comedy thriller”.
It’s more like a marathon of smut, with nothing remotely funny or thrilling about it. Indeed something very funny must have been in the water for the participants to have put so much energy into such a crass exercise: a 90–minute slagging match between an ageing misogynist tied to a kitchen chair and his 50-something female tormentor, who returns blows in between making tea, baking cupcakes and doing the ironing.
This is a hunter–becomes–hunted role reversal for Jarratt, best known for his performances in the Wolf Creek movies which had him picking off foreign tourists in meticulous gory detail. In this film, he plays a mop-haired balaclava-clad stalker named Jack who sneaks into the house of hospital nurse Emily (Fairfax) at night armed with a bag of torture instruments, only to be tasered and wake up gagged and immobilised.
Positioned at opposite ends of the kitchen table, the two then engage in a bizarre tête–à–tête that consumes the film. It’s a sort of foreplay gone bad, filled with endless talk about the opposite sex using some of the filthiest turns of phrase imaginable. The concept is like a middle-aged version of 2009 prom night horror-drama The Loved Ones, given the awkward atmosphere of a low-rent student theatre production intended predominantly to shock and offend.
Mission accomplished, but StalkHer is mostly just offensive as a work of art. Perhaps the film’s greatest achievement is that it somehow manages to extensively degrade both genders. Jack’s dialogue is unrelentingly misogynistic, his character never transcending the shallowest or most aggravating of stereotypes. Screenwriter Kristijana Maric ignores – or just doesn’t care – that Jack’s supposed challenge is to convince Emily to let him go unscathed.
On one occasion, Emily remarks that she is waiting for the right person to “pop her cork” and on another, wonders aloud whether she would be better off with “a boy like you” (for the record, Jarratt is 64). The characters speak to each other as if they were written to be potty-mouthed adolescents; for the first time in the history of Australian cinema two lead actors have been miscast by approximately 40 years.
Their exhausting exchange is broken up with visions of the characters fantasizing about various ways to hurt each other. Jack growls “I own you” as he grabs Emily around the neck and pushes her against the wall. Emily imagines kissing him while literally stabbing him in the heart. The centerpiece gag involves Jack urinating into a vase while Emily holds his penis with a mitten. Are you laughing yet?
At first StalkHer struggles with plausibility (why did she take two bites out of an apple, then throw it out the window? Why is he carrying torture instruments?) and soon becomes intolerable. Jarratt flails about in flabbergasted sexist mode, delivering nonstop bile in lieu of a character arc, while Fairfax tries her best to imbue Emily with the flavour of a snaky vixen.
But the script, relentlessly mean-spirited and topped off with preposterous twists, does them no favours. This war of words is a big, long, pointless spat and a cinematic endurance test of the worst sort – hard to take seriously and nothing to laugh at. “I could live without another slut tirade,” Fairfax says at one point, and for a brief fleeting moment, the film absolutely nails it.
