Watcher
As a serial killer stalks the city, Julia — a young actress who just moved to town with her husband — notices a mysterious stranger watching her from across the street.
- Released: 2022-06-03
- Runtime: 91 minutes
- Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thrillers
- Stars: Maika Monroe, Karl Glusman, Burn Gorman, Tudor Petruț, Gabriela Butuc, Madalina Anea, Cristina Deleanu, Bogdan Farcaș, Daniel Nuță, Ioana Abur, Flaviu Crisan, Ștefan Iancu, Florian Ghimpu, Lucian Ionescu, Radu Bunescu, Alexandru Ion, Ciprian Chiriches, Ionut Grama, Simona Pătruleasa, Ioana Hirica, Alice Cora Mihalache, Aida Economu, Andreea Sovan, Adrian Radulescu, Petre Moraru, Marius Cobzariu
- Director: Chloe Okuno
Comments
- PANDIAN120621 - 11 June 2024
Worth giving it a shot...!!!
Watcher builds slowly, spending plenty of time emphasizing the main character's isolation and loneliness. Each passing moment of this slow burn the paranoia of being watched... The last 20 minutes of the movie are intense and pay off nicely, though, and make it worth hanging around until the end...
This situation can and does happen to everyone, no matter their gender, but this movie shows how unconscious sexism influences and enforces this dynamic between men and women... The Spider(Burn Gorman), is menacing the city, he brutkills his female victims. While there are some jump scares instances of extreme violence and murder, the horror here is mostly psychological as an atmosphere of threat and paranoia builds up...
Maika Monroe did a fabulous job of a bored wife in a foreign city,One could easily just feel her growing fear... Francis(Karl gusman) reacts to the situation is logical and "rational" but it also frustrating He never took her seriously and instead blames it on her mental state or loneliness...
The film also looks really good. Visually it's(Benjamin kirk) aesthetically pleasing. Color grading, cinematography, and the tones used were great with the ample support of editor(Micheal block)
Overall Honestly one of the best thriller movies to be watched exactly one could crave for with No fancy music, action, or stunts are needed, just great writing and directing. It's just so realistic... - altsgrd - 27 March 2024
Mediocre movie done extremely well
I didn't really know much about "Watcher" before I started watching it. In truth there's not all that much to know to be honest:
A couple moves to Romania. Husband works while wife sits around waiting for him to come home. Wife believes that somebody is stalking her and husband thinks she is going crazy.
It sounds ridiculously simple because it is. We've seen it before - HOWEVER - Okuno clearly set out to make a brilliantly executed suspense flick and did just that.
The movie is contained and everything in it is there for a reason. Cinematography and especially the sound design is incredibly well done and makes the simplest thing like shopping for groceries an unnerving experience.
And finally the biggest praise has to go to Monroe. She has come a long way from "It Follows" and here she brings this simple movie to life with outstanding (and very believable) acting that successfully makes you question her sanity. Hopefully she'll bless us with her talent in many more (horror) movies to come.
Now obviously "Watcher" isn't the perfect movie even though everything is done so well. The fact is that we've seen it all before - countless times - and Okuno plays it extremely safe here by taking no chances whatsoever. This makes for an underwhelming movie experience as a whole and will no doubt bore some viewers.
Do I recommend "Watcher"? If you love suspense - YES. To witness Monroe's brilliant performance - YES. If you're looking for a great movie - NAH, go find something else. - sddavis63 - 28 January 2024
Is She Paranoid?
As I watched this film an old saying came to my mind: "Just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean they're not out to get you." That's not a bad summary of the central dilemma of this movie. Maika Monroe and. Karl Glusman star in this film as Julia and Francis - a young American couple who have to move to Bucharest in Romania after Francis gets a promotion from his company. As the movie opens we see them in a taxi heading toward their new apartment and everything seems good. There's a sense of anticipation and even excitement on Julia's face as this new pahse of their life begins. But we're also introduced to one of the problems Julia will face - while Francis speaks Romanian, she doesn't. She's dependent on others being around to help her with the language and if she happens to be alone (which she is a lot, because her husband is working long hours) she's quite lost. Very quickly it becomes clear that this is a very isolating environment for Julia, and she starts to become a bit paranoid (or does she?) when she thinks she sees a man in another building watching her, and then becomes convinced that he's following her. This happens after she and Francis, very soon after their arrival, had stumbled across a murder scene and discovered that there was a serial killer loose, preying on young women. She continues to encounter this man in the brown jacket, and the question becomes whether he's actually stalking her or whether she's effectively become the stalker who follows him.
Monroe was excellent in the role. Having surfed through her filmography it turns out that this is the first movie I've seen her in and I was impressed. She brought an innocence and naivete to the role as she struggled with this environment in which she had few people she could talk to and was dependent on others to translate everything that was being said. If I could compare Monroe to anyone it would be perhaps to a young Amy Adams (think of her role in "Enchanted" - a very different kind of movie obviously, but the same - if exaggerated in the case of "Enchanted" - innocent and naive qualities to the character.) A very good device was the fact that when people spoke Romanian in the movie, the film added no subtitles. We heard the Romanian, which put us in essentially the same frustrating position as Julia - we can't understand what's being said and we have to depend on someone to finally explain it. That helped me to relate to Julia's situation and drew me further into the movie.
I confess I was going to rate this a little bit higher except for the fact that I didn't like the ending. The movie had been mysterious and suspenseful, with a lot of ambiguity and uncertainty (a lot of atmosphere you might say) but the ending was too abrupt and too definitive. I didn't think it suited the rest of the movie. But having said that, it was still on the whole a very enjoyable movie. (7/10) - SnoopyStyle - 9 December 2022
good indie horror
American married couple Julia (Maika Monroe) and Francis (Karl Glusman) have moved to Bucharest. His mother is Romanian. She barely speaks a word of Romanian. In their new home, she notices a man (Burn Gorman) watching from an opposite apartment.
This is a good indie horror. I would call it a thriller, but it's not really an exciting film. It starts with the incomprehensible foreign language. Romanian is not one of the more widely known and it sounds foreign. There are no words or phrases to catch and hold onto. It's really foreign and that disassociates me from the setting. It's disconcerting and that's a good start to creating this paranoid feeling. The setup reminds me of Rear Window, but the situation is reversed. This is much more about the male gaze. It is the uncomfortable feeling of being watched. Director Chloe Okuno really captures the sense of female dread. - lauriskairo - 8 November 2022
Yea it was slow. But...
Yes. This movie is a slow burn and doesnt show much. But it still has that guessing. Is there a watcher? Who is the real wather etc. They casted a very pretty and good actress. She acted pretty good and believable. Plus 2 for that alone. I liked that it was filmed in Romania. Probably mostly why i liked the movie, mby because it was very realistic situation. Theres nothing paranormal. Situation like that could happen in real life to anyone. And just be sure and when someone is telling you something, you better believe them cause it might to be true or not... This is not a masterpiece, but decent one time watch before the sleep. - iciclespark - 16 October 2022
Increasingly implausible plotting and character choices make this movie laughable and annoying, not thrilling
I am baffled at the number of people raving about this one. Perhaps it is because they enjoy their films resembling Swiss cheese.
While the tone feels wonderfully Hitchcockian (and for that, it earns its three stars), the characters and plot are so increasingly absurd, infuriating and hinged upon irrational, implausible and impossible choices/events as to ask you to just suspend all belief in rational thought, self-preservation and reality.
To start, Julia and Francis move to Romania, with Francis fluent in the language and Julia with an affliction of disappearing and reappearing basic Romanian that never makes sense. At turns, she is completely unable to understand, yet can navigate the city's transit and stores easily for her solo ventures, somehow always stumbles onto an English speaker to move the plot along in a pinch and at a key moment, magically figures out a rather complex sentence for someone who couldn't understand the word "cat" earlier in the week to understand she's being insulted at a dinner party so she can flee in dramatic fashion. You can really tell here that the script was doctored from one set in America and the language barriers are forced in. Also, why wouldn't she have learned ANY Romanian in advance from her fluent spouse? Why would he take this job without her knowing it?
The inconsistency of police actions also rings hollow. She reports being followed during a man hunt for a serial killer who allegedly STALKS HIS VICTIMS FIRST and targets couples. She has photos of him doing it. And yet, the police dismiss the idea outright. But when the stalker calls the police claiming he is the one being stalked, they immediately take him seriously and demand she behave, bringing him to her door and forcing her to shake hands, insinuating her initial report was her harassing HIM?
But perhaps the most absurd part of all of this is having to believe Francis' increasingly bizarre refusal to support Julia, and her willingness to endanger herself and put up with a lousy husband in a situation that doesn't benefit her at all. While initially supportive and the one who suggests looking at the surveillance footage, Francis immediately tells Julia the footage is not evidence of anything. He tells her that the man in the window being the same person is just a merry coincidence! He mocks her to his coworkers! He tells her she is paranoid and making HIS life harder. It's beyond over the top and of course, simply must happen so Julia is completely alone and unprotected for the finale.
Conversely, Julia tolerates this behaviour despite having no job, no ties to Romania and a husband who is constantly out late and doesn't give a single care about her emotional wellbeing. She doesn't fly home. She doesn't move to a hotel. No, she follows her stalker down dark, rainy alleys in strange areas, despite not knowing the language. She goes off with strangers without leaving a note so she's untraceable if she goes missing. She enlists strangers in her investigations, including a strange man pounding on the door of a missing woman, not once considering that maybe it's a decoy and he could harm her. The moment my husband and the police started telling me I was dead wrong about the events unfolding and dismissing my fears, my bag would have been packed. This movie would have ended in 40 minutes tops.
And don't even ask me about the medical impossibilities of certain events.
This movie was clearly written by someone who wrote the characters and events as they needed to be to get the effect/next step they wanted, versus what actually made sense. It's amateurish suspense, a bad Xerox of an old master. Don't waste your time.
