The press notes state that Okuno’s goal in making the film was to capture “a kind of constant, uncomfortable dread that accompanies many women throughout their lives.” This feeling is not to be scoffed at, as it is when Julia shares her fears with Francis. She’s given only a few moments to release some of her pent-up energy, which she does with a captivating display of mania that could have been better distributed throughout the film. Monroe, who’s at her best when she’s able to let loose in fits of fear and panic, gives a much more reserved performance here than in “It Follows” (a fitting alternate title for this film, as it turns out).
#WEATHER WATCHER REVIEW SERIAL#
“The Spider,” a serial killer who slashes women’s throats to the point of beheading, is also on the loose, in case Julia needed any more reason to feel stressed out.
The drabness of the city is beautifully depicted in a sort of half-light that makes it feel slightly out of time, and Julia floats through her environment in a kind of dazed awareness, curious about what surrounds her but distracted by a nagging feeling of being followed. The film is centered around Julia’s days spent alone in the city while her husband Francis ( Karl Glusman) is at work, either in her luxurious apartment or wandering through Bucharest’s winding streets. ‘Achilles’ Review: Iran’s Authoritarian Crackdown on Filmmakers Underscores a Melancholy Road Trip Drama “Watcher” spells out every plot point to a tee, when we wish it would slowly, playfully tug at the threads of our anxieties. But instead of leaning into the ambiguous tensions and uncanny experiences, “Watcher” fails to live up to its inspirations, ending up a heavy-handed, predictable trip through genre tropes with a rather lifeless cast at its core. When writing the script along with Zack Ford, Okuno was inspired by filmmakers like Roman Polanski and Sofia Coppola, both masters at depicting what it’s like to be an outsider in a foreign place. Add to that a stark language barrier and a neighbor who may or may not be spying on her from across the street, and you’ve got all the ingredients for a taut paranoid thriller. The Eastern European city’s mix of bleak, brutalist architecture and baroque government buildings only add to the isolation that the film’s protagonist, Julia ( Maika Monroe), feels as she tags along when her half-Romanian husband is transferred there for work. IFC Midnight releases the film in theaters on Friday, June 3.Ĭhloe Okuno could have struck gold when production of “ Watcher” was relocated from New York to Bucharest, Romania. (Glusman’s heroically regrettable moustache offers its own grounds for divorce.Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. She has punched up an underlying psychology in Zack Ford’s script: the wife’s mounting fears compounded by frustration at a Rational Spouse seeking to explain them away as girly misunderstanding. Striding confidently into studio terrain after contributing to last year’s V/H/S/94 horror anthology, Okuno works up a muted style and aces the setpieces: retooling passing extras as peripheral threats as the sound design goes right through you. Yet Watcher offers not just relief that it exists, but actual, genuine, old-fashioned thrills. As recently as Wes Craven’s Red Eye in 2005, we could take this species of medium-budget runaround for granted. Suspicion shifts and moves closer and closer to home, but on one point Chloe Okuno’s film remains resolute: these characters would have avoided a lot of grief had they invested in net curtains. Company man Karl Glusman and resting actor Maika Monroe are the upwardly mobile young Americans relocating to a Bucharest bolthole boasting a prominent picture window with hubby out schmoozing clients, his better half has time enough to dwell on a gruesome local murder spree, and the silhouetted figure peering down from an adjacent property. Not to be confused with the recent Netflix hit series, this is in fact a very solidly engineered Hitchcockian throwback.
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