Lauras Schatten

Richard Thomas is so good in this part it's scary. The first time I saw this I thought, he can't be that good an actor, he must be a maniac in real life. He does a very effective job, playing a techno geek who becomes obsessed with a coworker. He takes it from being just an annoying pest through the stalker stage, into the full blown maniac stage. Even when he is walking around with a shot gun he is very believable. No Rambo type violence, just a seemingly normal person who happens to be treating life like a video game. It is disturbing and you ask yourself, what would you tell your daughter or friend to do in that type of situation. All the legal avenues seem to make it worse. There are no easy answers. It definitely made me want to look into the case this is based on. Thomas was expected to carry the movie and he did. Brooke Shields was perhaps at her best in this part, but the whole movie hinges on if you buy into Thomas as the stalker and it does it quite well!

This movie was very creepy to me because this kind of thing happens every day.

What I can never understand, though, is why people don't notify law enforcement when things start to get out of hand (one has to be careful with employers, as they're quite often "good-old-boy networks" only concerned about protecting their own, as well as covering their own behinds). If I were the personnel director and I heard comments like he was making, I would have notified the police as soon as he left! However, this film was made in 1993, before workplace and school shootings became fairly commonplace.....

That withstanding, I've never been a victim of stalking, but you can bet that I would also never let things get as far as they tend to do with many people (maybe it's the way I was raised, or because I have a pretty good self-esteem, who knows).

Nevertheless, I find these types of films much more captivating and closer to home than the usual stuff out there.

It's too bad that there are such people in this world.......

When I first saw the movie, I was completely shocked! Richard Thomas did an amazing job, with this part! I saw the fear in Brooke Shields eyes, but her crying wasn't really good, sorry. The human resource lady, she was protecting Richard more then Laura! I didn't like her comment about Laura's smile! The other lady that showed Richard getting Laura personal information was so wrong! This company didn't protect Laura like they should have! She could have sued them! Laura went through hell and had to the surgeries because of him! Just because she refused to go out with him, he sexually harassed Laura for 4 years and they were worried about his clearance! What about Laura's!?! Richard was fired for threatening to kill the lady and his work fell off! Laura had every right to get restraining order, on him! If someone is talking about company's doors they should have warned the company! And, maybe saved lives! The music used, was perfect for this story!

Richard Thomas was excellent playing a really sick individual. Brooke Shields was good and too gorgeous for words.

Just a word re: a previous reviewer saying she should have just gone out with him once and that she was a snob.. No, no, no...that just encourages stalkers and can actually make it worse. She did nothing wrong...she was the VICTIM!! It gets kind of blurred sometimes...(Sorry to sound preachy, but, I teach health and healthy relationships in HS and I try so hard to help the kids know the difference).

Anyway, good docudrama and can help give some insight into these potentially dangerous situations.

STALKING LAURA, a true story about one man's increasing obsession with a work colleague which leads to eventual tragedy, is an astonishingly good film and quite possibly one of my favourite made-for-TV movies of all time. On the face of it, it looks like every other TV-movie ever made: matter of fact, routine, bogged down with the 'true story' hook. Indeed, for the first half of the production, all is familiar and safe, rather than gripping.

The film is anchored by Richard Thomas delivering a completely surprising turn as the villain of the piece. Thomas underplays it, selling us his nice-guy John Boy Walton character with a few hidden undertones; a little too insistent here, a gaze lingering too long here. Shields is perfectly adequate as the increasingly frustrated object of his obsession, but the film belongs to Thomas.

Then he flips and the film becomes something else: gripping, gutsy, compelling, harrowing and completely shocking. I wasn't expecting what happened next, but from that point in I was glued to the screen. Few films have the guts to tackle such disturbing – and, indeed, increasingly familiar, at least in the news – subject matter, but this movie handles it with aplomb. Kudos then, to both scriptwriter and director for making an unforgettable movie.