Watcher (2022)

Score: 3 / 5

Hitchcockian in the best way, Watcher is the latest domestic thriller available on demand right now. The story concerns Julia, new to Bucharest and isolated by her ignorance of the language. She's disoriented and apparently lonely, as her Romanian husband is off working his new marketing job. Her possible paranoia is immediately clear to us in her introduction scene to their new apartment with its large picture window. Looking out at her neighbors across the way, she quickly notices a man staring at her. As the days progress, he tends to pop up in that window, looking right back at her. Is he lonely, too? Maybe, but there's a distinct menace to his presence, perhaps partly because we are not allowed to see anything of the interior of his apartment.

When I reference Hitchcock, I mean as in Rear Window, of course, and Dial M for Murder and Rope; this film also works hard to establish itself within the fairly recent trend of woman-led domestic thrillers such as The Girl on the Train, The Woman in the Window, and the works of Gillian Flynn. Interestingly, this movie pretty much plays itself as seriously as it can, and also in an almost off-putting straightforward fashion. There's never really doubt that the creepy man across the way is, in fact, "The Spider," a serial killer known for beheading his female victims. There aren't a lot of police to create drama from shifting power dynamics or character conflict; there isn't a lot of drama to Julia or her husband, either. This is a stylized arthouse film that is almost too accessible for its own good in that there aren't wild plot twists or shocking character revelations. This is pretty much exactly what its synopsis implies.

Its seriousness isn't just in terms of its screenplay or performances, though Maika Monroe is chillingly economical in meting out her growing dread and discomfort. Director Chloe Okuno is so determined to get us in Julia's headspace that she often shoots in massive wide shots, working extra hard to isolate Julia in the dubiously oversized apartment, and in cold or bland light to smooth everything over and give the uncanny feeling of being institutionalized. Even the choices of colors -- Julia's red sweater and tights, for example -- feel intentional in a quiet but bold manner, suggesting sometimes thematic or character insights that might otherwise be absent from the screenplay (the red feels like the color differences in Psycho, where here we might suspect Julia's heated suspicions manifesting in her wardrobe, or even perhaps suspect that her lonely walks through town may not be as innocent as we first supposed. Long stretches of silence fill the cavernous visuals of this film, icily silencing the film's audience (or putting them to sleep, if this isn't your thing) into a pattern of baited breath.

As Julia begins to see the titular watcher around town -- even realizing, horribly, that he is certainly stalking her -- we begin to wonder if the title refers to him or to her. She is watching him just as much as he is watching her, if it's even him. We wonder why her husband isn't more disturbed about her concerns, but he plays it in a way that might suggest either deep misogyny (she's surely hysterical, being alone in a new place) or prior experience (she's unhinged by some mental illness or trauma he's seen before). It's not made clear by the film either way, but it allows us to feel, as Julia does, that she is very much on her own in this situation. I was reminded, too, of other films, like Charade and Gaslight and Repulsion and began to wonder if the husband was somehow implicated. But this film is, as I noted, much too straightforward for that. And, while there are indeed some frightening "action" scenes, this movie is brave enough to keep things vague, suggestive, realistic, and intensely psychological. Half the horror of this film is its active attempts to get us to think about what if and what might happen; when the threat is unmasked, it's not quite so scary. But it's still thrilling!