Stalker is gaunt and bald, but with an odd patch of seemingly dyed white hair on one side of his skull. He is hired by a man called Writer (Anatoly Solonitsyn), who is famous and rich and owns manses and many possessions, and a scientist called Professor (Nikolai Grinko), who dreams of great discoveries and a Nobel Prize. The first 37 minutes of the film are shot in gorgeous sepia, which makes the characters' post-Apocalyptic world actually look beautiful. They talk philosophy and plot how to get past the sentries who guard the entrance to the Zone, which has old railroad tracks as a port of entry.

Only upon entry into the Zone (via a small flatcar) do we get color, and even then it is subdued greens, browns, and steely grays - earth tones. There is no David Leanian explosion of color; it's more like the eye-level realism of a Werner Herzog. We get many hints of some strange force that is dangerous in the Zone, yet, as these all come from Stalker, and seem to never be borne out, we have no idea if the whole mythos of the Zone (manifestly based upon the real life 1908 Tunguska Fireball) is merely a collective societal delusion that the stalkers have learned to capitalize on financially, or if it's real.

Stalker seems to believe it’s real, for he is the most overtly fearful of the trio, filling their heads with the tale of the demise of his mentor, Porcupine (nee Teacher) - another stalker, who committed suicide after leading his brother to death in the Zone, and winning the lottery. He also tosses metal nuts and bolts, tied with pieces of cloth and handkerchiefs, down paths before he leads his clients down them, as if the paths were booby-trapped with landmines.

Stalker is also clearly the most religious of the trio, constantly berating them with Biblical ideas and quotes, as well as slowly building a mythology of the Zone as a dangerous place, a mythos that is never fulfilled. After the film enters Part Two, after an hour or so, the trio continue on, indulging in very Beckettian conversations.

Finally, they emerge at the beginning of a subterranean tunnel Stalker calls the ‘meat grinder.’ He makes his clients draw lots; Writer loses, and has to go first. There are many visual oddities along the way, but no real dangers, even when Stalker admonishes Writer for bringing a gun on the journey, just as they near the room that fulfills the innermost desires of his clients - the room that stalkers can never enter.