Now Showing: Night Stalker

 

Night Stalker

Genre: Crime/Horror/Biography

Director: Trey Edward Shults

Writer: Clive Steinbeck

Cast: Danny Ramirez, Michael Pena, Michael Chiklis, Zoe Kazan, Gabriel Chavarria, Barbie Ferreira, India Eisley, Isabella Gomez, Laurie Holden, Isaac Ordonez

Plot: Los Angeles, 1985

Richard Ramirez (Danny Ramirez) prowls a suburban street, his face in shadow, his movements quiet. He approaches a house. A flash of violence follows - a scream, broken glass, blood on his hands.

As the sun rises, Detectives Gil Carillo (Michael Pena) and Frank Salerno (Michael Chiklis) arrive at the scene. They exchange grim looks as they observe the aftermath of Ramirez's crime, including a blood-streaked pentagram on the wall. Carillo takes a closer look at a single footprint left behind.

In 1972, 12-year-old Richard Ramirez (Isaac Ordonez) watches his older cousin Mike Valles (Gabriel Chavarria) show off Polaroid pictures he took during his time in the Vietnam War. The images are brutal and disturbing, depicting the violent and sexual aftermath of women he raped and murdered in Vietnam. He knows he should be disturbed, but Richard is captivated by the images. Mike senses his nephew's interest and hands him one of the photos as a souvenir. Mike's wife Jesse (Barbie Ferreira) returns from getting groceries and Mike quickly puts all of the pictures away. 

On another visit, Mike introduces Richard to drugs. They spend the day getting high and looking at more of Mike's Polaroids. Mike regales Richard with the bloody story behind each picture. Jesse enters the room and is furious that Mike is doing drugs with his kid nephew. Mike's jovial tone immediately turns cold. He grabs a pistol out of a drawer and shoots Jesse in the head. Mike sits back down. Richard crawls closer to Jesse's body, intrigued by the blood oozing from her body. He dips a finger into the blood, as if testing its texture. He doesn’t flinch. He just watches it pool and spread.

Back in 1985, Los Angeles residents lock their doors, installing extra locks, and even move out of the city as all of the headlines in the paper and on the evening news are about "The Night Stalker," creating a sense of public panic. Maria Fernandez (Isabella Gomez) is at home, one of many Los Angeles residents nervously checking her door and windows at night. A news anchor's voice cuts over static, reminding residents to stay alert and indoors after dark.

Ramirez breaks into a house, stealing jewelry and cash. His movements are erratic, fueled by a growing cocaine addiction. Afterward, he celebrates his small haul in a dingy flophouse. He lines up a rail of cocaine on the bathroom sink using a driver's license he stole. A cockroach scurries over the back of his hand mid-snort. He doesn’t react. 

Ramirez begins to escalate with his crimes becoming more violent with every crime. We only see brief glimpses of attacks and their aftermath as police arrive on each scene to inspect the brutality left behind by Ramirez. Detective Carillo examines a pentagram on the wall drawn in blood, hypothesizing that the man they are looking for may have a connection to Satanism. His partner, Detective Salerno, expresses disgust at the thought.

Ramirez attacks Maria Hernandez as she enters her apartment garage. He fires a .22 caliber handgun at her face. She survives when the bullet ricochets off the keys in her hand. She lays on the ground playing dead until Ramirez leaves. Maria goes inside her apartment to call the police, only to find that Ramirez has killed her roommate with a bullet wound to the forehead. Maria is clearly shaken as she gives her description of her attacker to detectives once her apartment is turned into a crime scene.

Ramirez prepare a ritual involving candles, blood, and a scratched pentagram. He mumbles supposed incantations, believing he's invoking Satan's power to make him invincible. He cuts into his own forearm with a house key, watching the blood drip onto the floor. He lights a match and holds it to his palm until it goes out.

Detectives Carrillo and Salerno hunker down in a windowless office, overwhelmed by files and crime scene photos. A corkboard displays the madness — blood-spattered walls, broken windows, symbols smeared in red. The randomness of the crimes throws off standard profiling. Carrillo begins to piece together consistencies: the Avia shoe print, the use of a .22 caliber gun, the Satanic elements. Salerno, trying to stomach the escalating brutality, admits the case feels unlike anything they’ve faced — almost like evil itself is moving through the city.

That night, Salerno returns home in silence. He drops his keys on the counter and finds his wife, Anna Salerno (Laurie Holden), sitting at the kitchen table in her robe. She doesn’t ask about the case — not directly — but she can see it on his face. He sits across from her, exhausted, not touching the tea she’s made. She gently asks if he’s eaten. He hasn’t. She reminds him the kids asked about him. He nods, barely present. Anna reaches for his hand. They sit there in the stillness, two people tethered together while something monstrous lurks just outside their walls.

Ramirez becomes bolder. One night, he invades a home in Monterey Park. He kills the husband in his sleep, then assaults and tortures the wife, forcing her to swear allegiance to the devil before he vanishes. When detectives arrive, the woman is still alive but in shock, trembling beneath a blanket. A shoe print left in the flowerbed confirms Carrillo’s suspicions — the same footprint they’ve seen again and again. Salerno crouches near the bed, taking in the horror. He pulls a sheet over the husband's body and quietly tells Carrillo not to let his kids read the papers for the next few weeks. Carrillo looks toward the bathroom and sees a broken mirror, shards still wet with blood.

Los Angeles spirals deeper into collective fear. Local news anchors can barely keep pace with the updates. People board up their windows, buy weapons, and start sleeping in shifts. The city’s heartbeat changes — slower, more cautious. The Night Stalker isn’t just a name now. He’s a presence. Dogs bark at nothing. Lights flicker in apartments. People begin marking their doors with crosses and salt.

A break comes when Inez Erickson (India Eisley) survives an attack. Her fiancé is murdered beside her, but she lives. Sitting under fluorescent lights at the police station, pale and stunned, she provides the clearest description yet — a tall, lanky man with stringy hair, decaying teeth, and a stare that seemed inhuman. A sketch artist quickly renders a face the entire city will soon recognize. As she finishes her statement, Inez asks if she can call her mother.

Meanwhile, Ramirez steals a Toyota and abandons it later, not realizing he’s left a fingerprint behind. Lab technicians run it through the system — and it hits. Richard Ramirez. A known drifter with priors. His mugshot, eerie and vacant, lines up with Inez’s sketch. For the first time, Carrillo and Salerno can give their monster a name.

The next morning, Ramirez’s face is plastered everywhere — newspapers, television, taped to lampposts and store windows. While he’s briefly in Arizona, the city braces. When he returns and sees his own face on the cover of a newspaper, panic sets in. At a bus stop, a man lowers the paper to stare at Ramirez. Their eyes meet. Ramirez bolts.

Ramirez attempts to carjack a woman in East L.A., but word spreads fast. Residents recognize him. A group forms — men and women alike. They give chase, cornering him in the street. He tries to run, but they catch him, beating him into submission with fists and makeshift weapons. By the time police arrive, Ramirez is bloodied and defeated. He doesn’t fight them. Instead, he stares at the crowd around him — not with fear, but with bemused detachment. 

At his arraignment, Ramirez wears sunglasses and walks into the courtroom with a slight grin. He raises his hand to show a crude pentagram drawn on his palm. He mumbles something dark under his breath. Survivors and victims’ families sit in the gallery, disturbed by his complete lack of remorse. Reporters scramble to capture the moment — the man who terrorized Los Angeles standing there like he’s proud of it. In the hallway afterward, Carrillo watches the media frenzy through a window.

Meanwhile, a woman named Doreen Lioy (Zoe Kazan) becomes transfixed by the media coverage. A writer and editor by trade, she begins sending Ramirez letters in prison. She believes he’s been vilified, misunderstood. Over time, her fascination turns romantic. She visits regularly. Eventually, they marry inside the prison walls. She beams in photos. Ramirez, detached as ever, barely reacts. Doreen keeps a scrapbook in her apartment - newspaper clippings, prison correspondence, a wedding photo taped inside.

Carrillo and Salerno sit quietly in a diner not far from the courthouse. They don’t speak much. The exhaustion of the case lingers in their eyes. One of them reflects on how they stopped Ramirez, and the other nods — but neither of them looks relieved.

During one of her many visits, Doreen bribes a guard with an envelope and a favor. The man doesn’t ask questions — he just steps outside for a smoke and leaves the security camera conveniently pointed away from the visiting area. Richard sits in the corner between two humming vending machines, legs stretched out, eyes half-lidded. Doreen approaches like it’s a ritual. She whispers something into his ear. He smirks. Later, she exits the prison looking flushed, adjusting her skirt.

 

On death row, Ramirez lounges in his dim cell. He mutters to himself, his words unclear, eyes locked on some point beyond the wall. Slowly, he turns his head toward the camera, almost as if acknowledging the audience. He smiles faintly. His eyes are hollow. Above his bed, scratched deep into the paint, is the word “GOD” — carved backward.

On-screen text:

Richard Ramirez was convicted of 13 murders and sentenced to death in 1989. He died of cancer in 2013 at the age of 53. His victims are remembered. Their names are not forgotten.