Watcher is the feature directorial debut from Chloe Okuno, who is working from a screenplay by Okuno and Zack Ford. While most probably won’t recognize that name, horror fans will likely remember her for directing one of the better segments of the surprisingly solid V/H/S/94, “The Storm Drain.” Watcher follows a young couple, Francis (Karl Glusman) and Julia (Maika Monroe), who move from America to his hometown of Bucharest following a promotion at his job. Things seem fine at first until Julia notices a neighbor (Burn Gorman) across the street staring at her from his window, and soon believes him to be stalking her, and potentially connected to a local serial killer.
As a story, Watcher is pretty straightforward, arguably too straightforward. There isn’t a whole lot in terms of surprises. That isn’t to say there isn’t anything of value being explored here. Hell, the idea of a story in which a woman feels threatened by a man, but no one believes her is one that feels all too relevant, especially considering a certain court case that has caught the public eye in all the worst ways. There’s definitely relevance here, it’s just not fresh, and the ideas it wants to explore here are too basic to have impact.
That said, while the material on the page can feel a bit basic at times, the way it’s all visually realized is pretty strong. It’s definitely a far cry from the purposefully janky sensibilities of her V/H/S/94 short, the look of Watcher is slick, yet grimey, cold, but not sterile. The way the film utilizes a paranoid lens is impressive and really effective, like whenever we have a shot of Julia walking, a part of us is always checking the background to see if there’s anything funky going on that she doesn’t realize just yet.
The film takes a fairly measured and restrained, borderline old-fashioned, approach. It doesn’t go over-the-top with its revelations and plot turns, keeping a grounded feel that allows the audience to easily get sucked into Julia’s mindset. It has a slow build to a finale that is genuinely shocking, unnerving, and intense, even if the sequence on the page feels like an inevitable point for the story. The violence that does occur in the film hits hard, and it’s because of the filmmakers’ subtle approach to things that allowed the ending to have the emotional and satisfying payoff that it has.
What Chloe Okuno does so well with Watcher is the way she captures loneliness, not just in literal terms of Julia being in a country where she barely knows the language, but also in terms of the emotional loneliness she experiences, feeling as if no one is going to believe her fears and concerns. It makes the film run with this level of unnerving intensity that starts at frame one, and doesn’t really let go until the very last. Maika Monroe delivers a terrific performance, one that has her working on multiple levels, the one where she is deeply afraid and looking over her shoulder, and the other where she tries to play a straight face despite all the gaslighting from the people around her, telling her there’s nothing to worry about. There’s a lot she manages to convey with a look, or the twitch of an eye. All the performances are good here, but this is Monroe’s show. I can’t really say if the film offers enough to warrant revisiting, but at the very least, it should let you know that Okuno is a filmmaker to watch, pun intended.
Watcher is now out in select theaters, and it will be available on VOD platforms starting June 21st.