Stage Fright

What an absolutely awfully made, terrible story line movie I wish I hadn't wasted my time watching it

This is Fred Olen Ray's modern update of The Phantom of the Opera... and it could have worked.

Sarah Conrad (nicely portrayed by Jordan Ladd) has not been on stage for the last three years after being traumatised by a stalker attack. Now a newly renovated theatre is set to open and they have Sarah's old understudy, Melissa (played venomously by Rachel True) set to appear on opening night. However, somebody may have a different agenda.

To be honest, the cast is pretty much hit and miss, the film is carried by Ladd, True, Pietruszewski, and Hutzler. Unfortunately, the latter two actors characters, Mark and Ryan respectively, could have been filled out a little more to make them interesting. This along with a slow and boring pace really do hinder the film. The slowness wouldn't have been a bad thing as long as there were tension and atmosphere there... but there wasn't.

The major downfall was the totally unenigmatic and dull stalker. Granted, the majority of stalkers are probably dull and normal, though for a story such as this you at least need to give them a predatory air. Again this was missing.

All in all, the story needed streamlining as more than a few scenes were superfluous. Characters need to be flushed out more. Tension, atmosphere, and mystery, needed to be added into the mix. And the one gaping hole in the story needed to be addressed.

The gaping hole is Sarah's previous attack. Though the police were there and they shot the perpetrator nobody caught sight of his face or knew who he was. Since the body fell off a bridge into a fast flowing river the body was never found. Since this stalking had been going on for a while it's hard to believe nobody knew anything at all about the attacker.

I'd not recommend anybody to watch this film, though if there's nothing else on and you have time to kill you could give it a try.

That was the worst Lifetime Movie Network movie i have ever seen. Horrible acting, horrible plot, horrible writing, and a horrible waste of 90 minutes. I really can't believe I made it to the end. The credits rolling was the best part of the movie!

You can't watch this movie and expect anything existential to come from it. It's a made-for-TV movie with an extremely low budget. I actually watched this movie only because I was mistaken about what I was clicking on. I meant to watch a different movie with the same name, and only realized about thirty minutes into it that it was the wrong movie. To be short and concise, this movie simply lacks everything that makes a movie a movie. The story is practically non- existent; the lead actor sounds like she is reading from a teleprompter that explicitly flashes (Show no emotion) while she reads it, and none of the other characters are in any way memorable or gripping. You have no reason to care about anyone in this movie.

The worst part however, is that there is no mystery about who the killer is. In fact, you're blatantly told who it is. There is no twist at the end, there is no secret, there's just nothing. It all plays out like an on-the-rails children's ride at some low budget amusement park.

I have nothing nice to say about this movie because it has zero redeeming qualities.

1/10 Do not watch it, and in case you were fooled like me, no, this is not the 2014 Stage Fright movie(which this film evidently stole it's name from)