Lover, Stalker, Killer Review: Capable of Involving the Viewer with its Twists and Turns
Cast: Dave Kroupa
Director: Sam Hobkinson
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars)
Lover, Stalker, Killer – on Netflix from February 9th – is a docufilm about a true story, a story of persecution and madness, told by the voice of the protagonists. The perfect recipe for telling a true story in a documentary: starting from the beginning, proceeding linearly, after investigators with 20 years of experience say they have never seen a case like the one we are about to see. This is a documented news story, focusing on the unusual and dangerous love triangle created between Dave Kroupa, Liz Golyar, and Cari Farver. A triangle was born from a romantic dating app and ended with first-degree murder and a life sentence behind bars.
Netflix’s 2024 true crime continues with another documentary on a case so absurd that it doesn’t seem true: after All American Nightmare (which we told you about in our review), the streaming giant’s catalog is enriched with the account of a story that It is truly incredible, the story of a criminal mind capable of persecuting a man (and his family) for years under a false identity. As we will see in this review of Lover, Stalker, Killer, the documentary film directed by Sam Hobkinson begins by telling us the story of Dave, a man who, after divorcing his wife, decides to start going out again and start a new life: bad luck, however, it leads him onto the path of a woman who will turn out to be a monster, capable of ruining his existence through continuous stalking and acts of violence. What makes this case one of a kind? The fact that the stalker who persecutes poor Dave will be able to get away with it for years, hiding her identity in the most unexpected way possible.
Lover, Stalker, Killer: The Story Plot
Shanna ‘Liz’ Golyar lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and met a man David Kroupa in 2012, via a dating app. The man immediately told the woman, a mother of two, that he was only interested in a causal relationship. Initially, Liz seemed to accept this situation. The situation became complicated when Kruopa met Cari Farver in his workshop in Macedonia, Iowa, with whom he began a relationship. By chance, Golyar met the woman in Kroupa’s apartment building. Out of jealousy, Shanna then killed Cari. Ms. Farver was last seen on 13 November 2012 by Kroupa, when she left her flat and went to work. A few hours later, she received a message from Cari suggesting that they move in together. After receiving a ‘no’ as an answer from her, as she also wanted a not-so-serious relationship with her, Cari said goodbye to him, convinced that she no longer wanted to have meetings with him. No one saw Farver again, but Kroupa continued to receive messages from her cell phone over the years, including threats and stalking.
Lover, Stalker, Killer Review And Analysis
Yes, Dave’s story is truly absurd. Also, because it is a very, very heavy stalking story Dave himself, a repeat offender, somehow “reactivates” by making the same mistakes. The problem is that as long as you’re alone, you’re in trouble. But when you have a family, everything changes. Being afraid of yourself is terrible, but being afraid of someone you care about is way worse. Dave Kroupa has experienced both sensations, experiencing years that no one would wish on his worst enemy. A chance encounter, in the workshop where Dave works, turns his life into hell. He didn’t know that Cari, the woman he met and liked very much, was bipolar. He didn’t know she was a stalker. He never knew, nor would he have imagined, that she would become a murderer. With spectacular photography, unusual on such a level for a documentary, Lover, Stalker, Killer tells us a scary, but also very informative story.
Dave didn’t meet Cari on the internet, but his very presence on a dating site allows the stalker to find him, after a long time, starting to persecute him and his family again. While the police desperately search for Cari Farver, who has long disappeared without a trace except for the messages she obsessively sends to her victims, the plot becomes more complicated. An IT expert delves further into research and discovers that, in the case of stalker Cari Farver, nothing is as it seems. His discovery is shocking. And yes, the narrative premise was indeed true: you have never seen a case like this. It sounds like a thriller script. One of those TV movies they show in the afternoon because they’re disturbing but don’t show anything terrifying. They limit themselves, in fact, to being disturbing. Netflix rarely disappoints with documentaries, but this time we are truly at very high levels.
Breathtaking, movie-like images, with truly unique attention to detail. Archive images mixed with reconstructed images and shots taken with great commitment also give a visual charm to this story. I have seen dozens of true crime films, especially those in the Netflix catalog, and I have rarely felt so involved in the story of a new case. It is certainly thanks to the unusual quality of the images and the aforementioned film photography, but the screenplay also contributes. News cases are often reconstructed as they are followed by investigators: in a somewhat chaotic way, with various people and departments involved. While this time everything is so linear that it increases the level of amazement, one discovery after another. It’s like watching an episode of CSI. And it makes you think that if something like this had happened here, perhaps the murderer would have remained at large…
Sam Hobkinson’s documentary follows and tells the story of Dave Kroupa and Cari Farver very well, bringing its most absurd aspects to the screen. Narrating it in the first person are Dave himself, his ex-wife Amy, and the three policemen who took charge of the case until it was solved (a trio that seems to have been created for a “buddy cop” movie), and the viewer is dragged into the affair. We won’t wake you up to the twist that, at a certain point, completely turns the tables on the table so as not to ruin the surprise, but we are sure that Lover, Stalker, Killer will remain in the memory of lovers of the true crime genre. Prepare to be transported into a true story so full of twists and turns that it seems to have been born from the imagination of a thriller film screenwriter.
We have now learned to come to terms with that word so foreign, yet so full of fear and anguish as “stalking”. Eight letters: that’s enough to open up a possible world made of shortness of breath, eyes on you, fear, fear of walking, going out, living. Just thinking about it, a layer of chills runs through our body, let alone seeing it in the guise of a television work. And if all this wasn’t enough, that feature film becomes a documentary, a faithful re-presentation of an infernal nightmare. It doesn’t take much: a wrong meeting, a deadly affinity, two glances that shouldn’t have met. The road to obsession opens up before defenseless and unprepared victims. Victims whose lives will now be colored in pitch darkness, the same that envelops the mechanic Dave Kroupa during the docu-film directed by Hobkinson. Few beams of light illuminate his path, except those of lamps that observe corridors from which to spy and incendiary flames that burn and destroy everything.
The ordinariness of an existence like his is a further piece in this bridge that has opened before the viewer: a direct connection, in which the ease of identification increases that disturbing sensation that anything can happen, and everything can be destroyed in the instant of a second, or the space of a meeting. Wide shots and shots that become increasingly narrower; men and women immortalized in a restaurant, or at a bar counter, like characters in a painting by Edward Hopper. Insistent and increasingly distressing music; a shadowy photograph crossed by blinding neon: Lover, Stalker, Killer is a staging of tension. It is the visual rendering of the banality of evil conceived and concretized by an obsessive mind, where the eyes spy and the fear increases. What Hobkinson builds is a distant legacy of television fragments such as those internalized by continuous reruns of CSI, or Criminal Minds. Lover, Stalker, Killer is a descent into hell cloaked in anchoring to a real world that seems unreal.
The human mind, the same one that can embark on a journey into madness and obsession for a love that has only been touched upon, is put to the test, called to welcome this shocking story to internalize it, make it one’s own, and try to derive something useful for the beyond the sense of discomfort that this entails. At first glance, Lover, Stalker, Killer do not present anything different from what has been said and done by other previous documentaries. Yet, it is in the hidden interludes of the testimonies given by the protagonists, and in the re-presentation of those very exciting moments, that the true essence of a work like this is found. There is an internal rhythm, a dynamism of the story in perfect harmony with that of a beating heart, which gives the right pulse to the documentary. The scenes recreated without the help of actors, but by falling back on the protagonists of the case themselves, are a further level of identification and involvement within a story so intricate that it seems real.
Repeating the same actions, performing gestures and expressions previously anticipated verbally, and reliving those moments a second time, is not only a sort of exorcisation of pain and tension for each of them but further proof to offer to one’s spectators about the veracity of the case. It is a work that haunts us, chases us in our externalization from the real world to forcefully bring us back to our everyday life, the most destructive, terrifying, distressing one, Lover, Stalker, Killer. It destroys us with homicidal fury, torments us like a stalker, and lets us look at it like a lover, Hobkinson’s work. And we can’t help but fall victim to it, let ourselves be overwhelmed by his story, and follow his every step to free ourselves from all fear before returning to reality. A reality that can sometimes truly be more unthinkable and unlikely than the page of a thriller.
Lover, Stalker, Killer: The Last Words
Lover, Stalker, Killer is a documentary that tells a disturbing true story, capable of involving the viewer with its twists and turns. There are investigators involved who refuse to undergo surgery until the case is solved. There are archive images and interviews mixed with reconstructed images and film footage. Very high visual and narrative quality, unusual for true crime. Lover, Stalker, Killer is probably the most accurate, compelling, and full of-twists and turns documentary film ever seen. A demonstration of how reality always ends up surpassing fantasy, and of how the commitment and self-sacrifice of those who fight for justice, even in reality, can make a difference.
Lover, Stalker, Killer Review: Capable of Involving the Viewer with its Twists and Turns - Filmyhype
Director: Sam Hobkinson
Date Created: 2024-02-09 18:15
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