Phone Stalker

It had been 13 years since John Carpenter's THE WARD. He should have stayed retired. Carpenter lends his name to the series and directed this one episode. His voice introduces the program, and he sounds lazy and tired.

Carpenter's episode, The Phone Stalker, is 'based on a true story' of a Long Island woman getting harrassing phone calls from an unknown man. Potentially interesting, and there's a stray moment or two of interest, but sadly, Suburban Screams is like a basic cable True Crime re-enactment show - only with dick pics! Production values are minimal, with the Czech Republic standing in for New York. The acting is, to be charitable, passable. The episode just peters out.

Hard to believe after this long of a layoff, Carpenter would get off his couch to direct this. Oh, wait, Carpenter DIDN'T get off his sofa, for you see, he directed from his living room in L. A.! The shoot was in Prague, but Carpenter was comfortably sitting in his jammies "directing" via link-up - 6,000 miles away. Even though he's listed as Executive Producer Carpenter himself has said he had little input over cast, crew and storylines and was inundated with studio "notes" (one of which was, apparently, the inclusion of said dick pics).

If you are a Carpenter fan, do yourself a favor and NOT watch this sad footnote.

Here it is, the long anticipated life signal as a director by the master of horror John Carpenter himself.

His last feature film was 'The Ward' (2010). After that he did some music videos, some sountracks p.e. For the recent Halloween-Trilogy (2018-2022) by director David Gordon Green and the 'Firestarter'-Remake (2022), did work on some computer games and was more or less 'just' executive producer of movies like the recent Halloween-Trilogy and now of this tv show 'Suburban Screams' (2023).

In this episode John Carpenter is not only the director, but also composer of the music together with his son Cody Carpenter and composer Daniel Davies, who are a good team that works together for years and did the soundtracks for the recent Halloween-Trilogy.

This episode feels a little carpenteresque, bears it his signature:

• terror and suspense
• the topic 'stalking' is a real horror, no supernatural monsters/killers here
• the electronic, unsettling music
• uncomfortness till the end

Despite of all these trademarks of John Carpenter, the construct of the episode is the true crime setting with interviews as the framework of the plot and replayed scenes as flashbacks. Therefore, as a viewer I'm not fully into the whole terror and suspence because the main character is still alive and I don't have to worry during the flashback scenes.

But: the topic 'stalking' is a real horror of our modern society and it's well chosen for a suspenseful story.

The actress Julie Stevens (Beth) as the victim of a stalker in the flashback scenes tries her best to give a powerful and credible performance, but is not that convincing in some scenes and then you see how important it is to have good actors. Her performance is mostly ok.

More powerful and convincing is the interviewed Beth character.

The stalker is faceless, sarcastic and always a step ahead and reminds like a Cybercrime version of Ghostface from the Scream movies.

The running time of the episode is appr. 40 minutes and the episode is solidly executed, the plot is effectively constructed and the story is on point, but gives me no real goosebumps because of the true crime format of the show.

The topic stalking is interesting and keeps you busy even after the episode. Well done.

All in all a solid and satisfactory directional life signal from John Carpenter.