Not all Salem dramas explode with gunshots or screams. There are quieter, more haunting stories, like what’s happening to Stephanie in the hotel.

She’s there hoping to find a break, a space to breathe after a series of complicated love affairs, a shaky career, a family that’s always in trouble.

But as soon as the elevator doors open and she steps out of the lobby, Stephanie begins to feel something’s wrong.

Not the music, not the lights, but a very instinctive feeling: someone’s eyes are always watching her.

At first, she tries to brush it off. A girl who’s lived in Salem knows how her brain can exaggerate fear. But Days doesn’t create scenes for nothing. The camera constantly cuts to distant angles, from the hallway, from behind the potted plants, giving the viewer the feeling of being in the position of the stalker: seeing Stephanie dragging her suitcase across, hesitantly inserting her card into the room door, turning around when she hears footsteps but sees no one. Each time like that, the viewer’s heart rate is also pulled, even though there is no clear jump scare.

Then the signs become more specific: the knock on the door when she is not waiting for anyone, the footsteps stopping right outside the room and then leaving, the shadow of a person passing through the peephole. Stephanie begins to lose sleep, having to reassure herself many times that this is just a stressful period, that the stalker, if real, is unlikely to dare to do anything in a crowded hotel. But Salem always has a way of proving anyone wrong. One shot shows a stranger standing near her door longer than usual, his hand ready to touch the handle if someone does not appear at the end of the hallway.