Director: Chloe Okuno

Screenwriter: Zachary Ford, Chloe Okuno

Starring: Maika Monroe, Karl Glusman, Madalina Anea, Chloe Okuno, Burn Gorman, Gabriela Butuc, Tudor Petrut

Runtime: 1 hour 36 minutes

SXSW Synopsis: set in the midst of a citywide panic over an active serial killer, a young woman moves into a new apartment with her partner and is tormented by the feeling that she is being stalked by an unseen watcher in an adjacent building. (This review was originally part of MTR’s 2022 festival coverage.)

**

Watcher, director Chloe Okuno’s feature debut, follows Julia (Maika Monroe) and Francis (Karl Glusman), a young couple just arrived in Bucharest, Romania for Francis’ new job. Julia doesn’t speak Romanian or know the country. Almost immediately, she finds herself adrift in the city with an increasingly unavailable husband. She spends most days listening to language lessons and otherwise wandering around at loose ends. Francis does little to help his wife adjust. He’s quick to speak in Romanian, cutting her out of conversations by often failing to translate. He makes no attempt to orient her in the city or their new lives. The first night in their home, she notices the silhouette of a man standing at a window in the building across from theirs. He appears to be looking at her. Days later, in an attempt to convince herself she’s imagining things, Julia waves when she sees him. The man raises a hand and waves back. 

If this setup has a decidedly Hitchcockian feel, have no fear you’re not imagining it. The hints of voyeurism and Rear Window vibes echo thematically throughout the film. There’s even a very meta moment early on where Julia can’t shake the feeling of being stalked inside a theater while watching Stanley Donen's Charade. Okuno plays with visual perspectives with overhead shots, shots from below, and three-quarter angles to build an ever growing specter of doubt in what Julia’s actually experiencing. Her approach invites the audience to transfer their own anxieties and fears onto the main character. It’s not unique but unlike its predecessor films in the genre (think Hereditary or Repulsion), Okuno uses Julia’s seeming aimlessness to credibly make room for doubt without completely leaving the character as an empty cipher. In Monroe's capable hands, Julia’s got depth in her distressed gaze.  Her growing listlessness and lack of focus aid in distorting time and recollection. 

Paranoia is self-replenishing. Once something trips that switch, it's like a constant itch at the base of your skull; a twitch between your shoulder blades. If the feeling lingers long  enough, you can find yourself practically jumping at shadows, flinching away from people, and avoiding places where you can’t put your back to a wall. Thread that paranoia into a story centering a woman convinced she’s being watched (and possibly followed) who can’t get anyone to take her seriously and you’ve got the perfect nightmare fuel. 

As Julia’s sense of being followed increases, Francis begins to fully discount her unsettled feelings, casting her further adrift. It doesn’t help that there’s an actual serial killer, called the Spider, preying on women in the city. Pretty soon, she’s sleeping poorly and coming off as a blurry eyed hysteric to the people around her. So when her only friend, Irina (Madalina Anea), goes missing from the building; no one’s willing to take her seriously. Whenever she tries to articulate what she’s feeling, it comes out sounding hesitant and unconvincing. To others, the situation begins to look more and more like an unhinged American woman targeting a solitary local man. Monroe’s performance convincingly pushes you into questioning her reliability as a narrator. As incidents and inexplicable encounters keep happening even Julia begins to doubt herself. But if you, like me, automatically say, “oh no” whenever you see Burn Gorman’s name on a cast...