“Watcher” (2022) isn’t to be confused with the TV series “The Watcher” (also 2022) or the previous movie “The Watcher” (2000). But it’s understandable if you confuse it with dozens of previous stories. This minimalist piece of paranoia horror draws from a lot of classics, and although it is technically well made, it ultimately doesn’t stand out enough to have a reason to exist.
Another follower she can’t shake
In a role Rebecca Hall usually gets, Maika Monroe (“It Follows”) plays Julia, an American who has moved to Bucharest with her husband of Romanian descent, Francis (Karl Glusman), for his job. Usually horror films shot in Eastern Europe are set in New York or Detroit or a nameless horror dreamscape, but here it actually is Bucharest.
Director Chloe Okuno tells her story, co-written with Zack Ford, in deliberate minimalist style, letting us soak up the ratty-looking buildings that are rather beautiful in their rattiness. (Their apartment is nice on the inside, although usually dimly and moodily lit.) Throw in shots of Julia riding in a taxi in the rain – stoplights reflecting off the window – and subway cars occupied only by a mumbling crazy person, and we’re familiar with these stomping grounds.
“Watcher” (2022)
Director: Chloe Okuno
Writers: Zack Ford, Chloe Okuno
Stars: Maika Monroe, Karl Glusman, Burn Gorman
Julia is being followed around the neighborhood by a man from an apartment across the street who is always looking out his window. Like “Don’t Look Now” (1973), the touchstone of monolingual Americans feeling disoriented and lonely in Europe, “Watcher” could itself serve as a template.
There’s apparently a serial killer in the area decapitating people, but as in so many other horror films, that’s accompanied by the binary mystery of “Is this woman seeing real clues or imagining things?”
Either way, “Watcher” makes a case that Julia’s situation ain’t great for her mental health. Rather than getting a job, or even trying to, she sits around being paranoid and scared. She picks up her cigarette habit again (and we actually see her smoking on screen!) — another sign that “Watcher” is old-fashioned. As viewers, we might like Julia simply because she’s a pretty woman, but it becomes grating that she’s little more than a placeholding protagonist.
Not much of a mystery
Coming from short films and enamored by this chance to ape their favorite films, Ford and Okuno pass on chances to layer the mystery. We’re not seriously nudged to think the killer might be anyone other than the man in the window. While “Watcher” is nice to look at to an almost meditative degree, the story is so straightforward that we gradually lose hope for a twist such as a surprise killer or “It’s all in her head.”
Why is a movie like this being made in the 2020s? To be fair, a new entry in this genre does make us examine our paranoia about strangers in an age when technology – not to mention the “fear your neighbor” news cycle — is minimizing personal interactions. But since it doesn’t engage with that theme, it lands like a remake of 100 other films.
Sure, some people dislike the wild swings taken by, say, “Last Night in Soho” or “The Night House” (both 2021). But those films take the paranoia/mystery template and add another element that makes it stand out. Those swings should be taken.
Aside from the smartphones and flatscreens — and its modern smooth polish — “Watcher” could take place in the Seventies. But you might as well just watch an old thriller, because – rather than a dreamscape or a hidden reality – “Watcher” merely exists in a stylish echo chamber.