Everyone wants to be loved. It’s a primal emotional need for trust and safety with a partner or a friend. While you can’t always choose who you love, you might in fact end up being chosen as the object of someone’s affection, whether you want to be or not. This is where we land with the tech-thriller and stalker subgenre entry The Admirer. Director Martin Makariev with writers Rolfe Kanefsky and Chris Philip have created a tense, though sometimes predictable, modern era stalking feature to fit the times and give us one more reason to be afraid of our devices. With some standout performances, a modern twist on home invasion and a peek into just how vulnerable we are when we are fully plugged in, this film delivers some engaging action despite becoming somewhat of a formulaic whodunit. Regardless, I am always down to sleuth.
Opening to a quiet suburban neighborhood in New York, we find Nancy (Roxanne McKee) Face Timing her fiancé Ross (Lucas Aurelio). It’s the night before the wedding and the two are giddily discussing the upcoming nuptials. As Ross gives a tour of where he’s staying to Nancy, she notices a figure in the background as Ross stops by a window to show her the view. In a few short seconds, the intruder overpowers Ross, sending him out the window to his death. One year after these events, Nancy is back to work and having trouble. Off the bat we see neither her subordinate co-worker Sarah (Christina Bennington) nor her unimpressed boss Gina giving her much support for her work. It also appears that one of Nancy’s co-workers has been fired, as she goes to meet him. It turns out the fired employee and recent partner to Nancy, Doug (Jack Parr), was let go due to accusations of embezzlement and a lack of sufficient IT support. Nancy isn’t overly interested in this though, as she cheekily asks the man what her bra size is. Good on him, he gets that important question right, just for Nancy to pull out a bra from her purse, size D, she claims she found in his car. She swiftly ends the short affair, enraging Doug, who then assaults a man trying to diffuse the fight.
After the uproar with Doug, Nancy returns to work for a meeting with her catty colleagues. Her pitch goes well for a new product and, with a promotion dangling within reach, her and her assigned assistant Sarah begin work on her presentation. Just as the meeting concludes a familiar face walks in: the man Doug just assaulted. Martin Richards (Richard Fleeshman) is the new face of IT; surprise! That night, Nancy goes for drinks with Gina and discusses the situation further, bringing up painful memories of Ross’ death and the difficulties of moving on. Apparently, the police dismissed her claims of foul play and her having seen someone with Ross before he died. As we see this might be an after-hours mixer; co-workers are all around, Sarah is trying to get in good with Martin, and Nancy already seems to fancy him after his “chivalrous” conduct back in the café with Doug. Right before we depart the bar, one of her co-workers warns Nancy that Sarah is vying for her job, and that paranoia might not be unwarranted.
Nancy returns to her Smart Home where she activates a house wide speaker system with only her voice. Lost in the music sat at her computer, we flash back to the early days of Ross and Nancy’s relationship to find Nancy has had trouble with stalkers long before this. Prior to meeting Ross, she says she ghosted a man she had been chatting with on a dating app. After that, she received a photo of herself sleeping with a bouquet of roses placed next to her. Nancy’s spell is broken and she gets up to prepare for bed, we see her laptop’s camera light activate. Lights and cameras in the house suddenly begin to flicker, but we aren’t given any clues to this strange activity yet. We jump to the next day where Nancy is trapped with Sarah on an elevator ride of strange pitches for the new product. As they update the computer systems for a new IT protocol, Nancy gets into a conversation with Martin, chatting about the café incident and getting into some personal details, including her (somehow) volunteering her history of being stalked.
Talk turns and we see Martin has had some bad breakups and sour encounters dating as well, and he uses this as an opportunity to ask Nancy out, which she declines. After leaving the unfortunate scenario, Nancy receives a text message from Doug stating “You are going to end up like Ross.” Nancy returns home where Doug drunkenly intercepts her in the driveway. She repeats the message back to Doug and he’s confused as to what she’s referencing. Telling him to leave before she contacts the police, she emphasizes she’s ending things and goes inside to find that her house is acting up again: the thermostat to the shower (wild) is changing between boiling and freezing on its own. We have a lot of suspects that could be monitoring Nancy, but there’s far more mystery and terror to get through before we can book anyone.
The technological aspects of this film are the most interesting as we see how stalking has evolved into the age where everything is accessible. Turning Nancy’s own home, her safe space, against her was a brilliant move and gave very Black Mirror vibes to the futuristic dwelling. The cast does well enough, but McKee and Fleeshman carry the weight. McKee pulls off the single, hard working woman bit well enough, but she also breezes through with a hopefulness in spite of her mounting paranoia. Fleeshman from his first scene is all charm and winning smiles. Eager to please and a hit with the ladies, Fleeshman plays the humble IT recruit well and as his character develops, his performance only escalates. Some scenes though, that are meant to add sensuality or sexual innuendo, are inserted at strange times and throws the chemistry off. There’s not much creative work being done behind the camera or with the soundtrack, but we are given some different cinematic angles from surveillance footage and phones. We do get a few classic scares packed in as well, especially as I don’t know anyone who’s not squeamish about the garbage disposal.
Though a tad predictable once we get a look at the pool of suspects and their motives, a decent mystery is never a waste, especially if you have a suspect in mind and want to confirm your suspicions. It doesn’t break much new ground, but The Admirer does leave you feeling uneasy when you see just how painfully visible you are to everyone these days. I’m staring at the piece of tape I covered my laptop camera with, and if you decide to check out this enigmatic stalker story for yourself, you might want to get yourself a piece, too.
The Admirer (2021) is available on all major streaming and VOD platforms now.