Pretty Little Liars star Ashley Benson will get to tap into her small-screen experience with anonymous threats and malevolent surveillance for a feature film role, having signed on to star in the upcoming technological thriller Ratter. Benson will play Emma, a young graduate student living in New York, who slowly begins to realize that someone is watching her every move through her laptop and cell phone cameras.
Ratter is based on a short film, Webcam, which has racked up nearly 6 million views online. A nastily effective little effort, Webcam shows an increasing encroachment by a cyber-stalker into a young woman’s life, generating voyeuristic unease by never leaving the perspective of her laptop camera (and stalker’s) point of view. And while that premise is less unique now than it once might have been, Ratter director Branden Kramer—who co-created and directed Webcam with his cohorts at ZBros Productions—released the short back in 2012, before films like Open Windows and Unfriended had begun to tread similar stylistic territory.
It’s not clear whether Ratter will adopt the short’s choice of perspective, or if it’ll be shot in a more conventional format. In any case, it’s still likely to center on a creepy voyeur ogling an attractive young woman from behind a computer screen, which should provide a fresh, untested new perspective for millions of viewers worldwide.