Watcher Offers an Elegant Exploration of Female Paranoia

A younger couple strikes from New York to Bucharest for the husband’s huge promotion—he’s half-Romanian, speaks the language, and is instantly pulled right into a busy schedule. The spouse is left to spend her days alone, feeling misplaced, and turning into increasingly fixated on the person throughout the road who’s at all times staring out his window. Staring… at her?

That’s the set-up for 2022 Sundance Film Festival choice Watcher, the primary function from Chloe Okuno, who additionally co-wrote with Zack Ford; Okuno’s different credit embody writing and directing the “Storm Drain” phase in final yr’s Shudder hit V/H/S/94, which suggests she’s the one who got here up with the film’s rallying cry of “Hail Raatma!” But there’s nothing so fanciful as a sewer creature in Watcher, a film whose threats are all too human, emphasis on the man. That goes for the person throughout the road (The Expanse’s Burn Gorman, who has the proper “sinister without doing anything in particular” face); Francis (Devs’ Karl Glusman), the Romanian-American husband of principal character Julia (It Follows’ Maika Monroe), whose clueless disregard for his spouse’s loneliness turns to annoyance as she begins to mentally crumble; the police officer who thinks Julia is losing his time; and the serial killer often known as “the Spider” who’s been prowling Bucharest, decapitating ladies of their residences, and grabbing sensational headlines in consequence.

Watcher doesn’t break a lot new floor narratively, nevertheless it does deftly mix the concept of feeling utterly misplaced out of the country (certain, most individuals converse English, however Julia nonetheless feels overwhelmed by the language barrier—notably when Francis and his colleagues carelessly exclude her from their conversations) with Rear Window-meets-Rosemary’s Baby themes of voyeurism and surveillance, in addition to paranoia which will or might not be based mostly on something concrete. It’s arduous to not facet with Julia, particularly since she’s performed by the interesting Monroe, and since we take her perspective as she beings to suspect that the staring man has begun following her to the films, via grocery store aisles, and on the subway. Is it simply coincidental as a result of they’re neighbors, as Francis suggests, or is there one thing legitimately alarming afoot?

Julia does make one key connection as her in any other case remoted life begins to collapse: her next-door neighbor Irina (Madalina Anea), whose job as a peep-show dancer solely underlines Watcher’s obsession with the male gaze, and whose shared experiences as a lady coping with creepers helps floor Julia’s fears. At one level Julia asks her if she sounds paranoid, and Irina replies that it’s higher to sound paranoid than to be murdered as the final word “I told you so.” You’ll probably work out the place Watcher is heading earlier than it will get there, however its dedication to constructing dread by no means lets up, and it’ll completely encourage you to attract all of the shades in your home. Immediately.

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