There’s nothing especially unique about the mid-90s cyberthriller Cyberstalker.  Its novelty as internet chatroom techsploitation is not only drowned out by much bigger, louder Hollywood thrillers of its era like Hackers, Virtuosity, and The Net, but it also fought for video store shelf space with countless other direct-to-VHS cybertitles just like it: Cyberpunk (1990), Cyber-C.H.I.C. (1990), Cyber Tracker (1994), Cyberjack (1995), Cyber Bandits (1995), Cyber Zone (1995), Cyber Vengeance (1997), and cyber-so-on.  Cyberstalker‘s home video distributor Troma has since attempted to distinguish it from that overflowing bucket of cyberschlock by retitling it The Digital Prophet, but there are no marketing strategies creative enough to save it from the anonymity of content dungeons like Amazon Prime, Tubi, and PlutoTV.  The only distinguishing detail that might hook in an outsider audience who’s not a glutton for vintage cybertrash is a villainous role overperformed by horror convention veteran Jeffrey Combs, who counts as a major celebrity get for a film on this budget level.

Combs isn’t the main villain of Cyberstalker, though.  He’s just her cult leader & heroin supplier.  The titular cyberstalker is a reclusive chatroom nerd & comic book enthusiast played by Annie Biggs, an actress & director of little note.  Troma’s “Digital Prophet” rebranding makes some sense as a marketing ploy, then, since it centers the much more recognizable Combs, who writes the comic books that drive the actual cyberstalker mad.  Biggs plays a true believer in her dealer/abuser’s unhinged cyber-rhetoric, and her dedication to the cyber-cause gradually transforms her from a Lisa Loeb cosplayer shut-in to a cyborg dominatrix . . . at least in her mind.  As she recruits victims from the Cyberthoughts comics’ Cyecom chatroom, they only see her as a nerd with a gun.  The audience has the privilege of seeing the real world through her cyber-eyes, though, where her earthly body glitches out into PC monitor static and Windows 95 screensaver psychedelia.  It’s a little disappointing that the most novel, cyber-specific imagery in the movie is all in the killer’s head, but it is real to her and, thus, temporarily real for us.

No-name, no-relation director Christopher Romero attempts to treat this chatroom-murders novelty subject like a standard serial killer thriller, borrowing from the disembodied, leather-gloved hands of gialli and the window-blinds shadows of noir instead of intently pushing the vaporwave CG imagery to its Brett Leonard extremes.  In his most hilarious move, Romero even recreates the infamous Psycho shower scene with a handgun instead of a kitchen knife.  Despite those misguided efforts to dull down & normalize the film’s cyberthriller elements, there are still plenty moments of 90s techsploitation kitsch that shine through: the first victim is strangled with a modem chord; all victims read their Cyecom chatroom correspondence out loud for the audience’s benefit, like Sandra Bullock in The Net; and the final showdown with the cops on the killer’s trail is staged in a warehouse stocked with Dell computer monitors.  Of course, since there are countless other video store titles where you can find those exact mid-90s cyberthriller novelties, I should probably just be reporting on the one thing that might draw new audiences in to see Cyberstalker in particular: Combs.  The production could only afford Combs for a few scenes, but he makes the most of them, especially when performing a gunshot wound during the final shootout, making a full meal of his death like Paul Reubens in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie.

I rented Cyberstalker for one American dollar.  It was a small fee to skip the ad breaks of whatever cyberequivalent I would’ve watched on Tubi instead if this one wasn’t so cheap to rent.  I’m sure I would’ve gotten just as much (and just as little) out of Cyber-C.H.I.C., Cyber Vengeance, or whatever random noun Tubi would’ve autofilled as I typed the word “cyber” in the search bar, but I have no regrets watching this randomly selected cybertitle.  If nothing else, I’ve never seen a serial killer character costumed to look like Lisa Loeb before.  The closest example I can think of is Carol Kane in Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer, but even she had more of a Big Bad Wolf in Grandma’s nightgown look.

-Brandon Ledet