Watcher

dir. by Chloe Okuno (2022)

The marketing for this film would have you believe it is a moody, suspenseful, Hitchcockian thriller, with the potential to spill over into outright horror (distributed by Shudder in North America). It’s set and shot in Bucharest, and one expects a European slickness and restraint after viewing the (pretty decent) trailer. Despite all of this, only Maika Monroe’s involvement sparked enough interest in me to eventually see it. Something feels off about the trailer and look of the film; it belies an emptiness that eventually pervades just about every aspect of the film. While I felt this intuitively, I thought maybe I was just jaded, and surely Monroe wouldn’t have picked this if it wasn’t interesting. Well, here we are.

Firstly, I do appreciate what the filmmakers are going for here. There are a handful, maybe more, of recent genre films over the last decade or so working with similar themes of women navigating the predatory world of men, specifically struggling with the ingrained social skepticism of women’s fears and stories. There are of course many films from far longer ago with a similar subject matter (1984’s The Entity comes to mind as a good example, if flawed), but recently more female filmmakers have been behind the camera for these projects, and this is of course a good thing. I haven’t seen Okuno’s previous shorts, and some grace should be extended to this as her feature debut. And hey, a lot of critics seemed to like it, audience reaction was mostly positive, so my opinion is certainly not monolithic. But I also don’t think I’m wrong in my perception that this flew pretty well under the radar upon release, and seems to have left most viewers’ minds two years on.

Performance-wise, Monroe is strong. She sells her emotions, we like her, we care what happens, yadda yadda. Her character, however, is severely lacking. The movie takes a minimal approach to providing context; this is fine, though a kind of annoying modern trend with “elevated” genre fare that frequently just reads as lazy writing. She has no passions that we know of, no plan for a career in her new home country, no true quirks or even qualities to her person at all. She is an utter blank slate, and in tandem with Monroe’s extremely understated, somewhat expressionless style, I’m left cold by the events of the film, and without enough of an emotional investment to overlook everything else wrong with it. Which, uh, speaking of…

Did the DP for The Vampire Diaries shoot this fucking thing?? I have not seen such insanely blue footage in a major motion picture for over a decade. Due to the coloring of the film, what could be an interesting setting in Bucharest (shot on location!) instead evokes a cheap, made-for-TV cityscape backdrop, chosen solely for cheap shooting permits or government tax breaks. Every scene filmed outside, meant to spark paranoia and tension, is instead completely derailed by this one distracting element. The movie is un-subtitled, and it’s not a bad choice at all, we are in Monroe’s shoes every time she has to wait for her husband to translate, or can’t communicate when she needs to in a dangerous situation. I think maybe the coloring is meant to complement this feeling of isolation, but it unfortunately degrades the viewing experience so sharply as to draw out just how little else is on offer. And boy, is there a whole lot of nothing going on here.

Our stalker figure is completely miscast, it feels once again like a casting decision made by a TV true crime special from 20 years prior. We get it, he’s creepy, he struggles with direct eye contact, he walks too stiffly, his fingers are oh-so long and thin and pale, his hair’s too straight and shiny, the guy looks like taxidermy’s his favorite hobby. I think I may have literally rolled my eyes the first time he comes to Monroe’s door and we finally get a good look at him. Plot-wise, there’s not much to remark upon. People who liked the film do seem to take issue with the ending, which I get, some things happen that don’t make sense upon examination, but whatever. Personally, I’d take issue with the whole affair over that one detail, as everything that happens throughout the entire film feels so mechanical and unsurprising in the slightest. No twists are taken outside of the obvious, no left turns into unexpected territory, no real ambiguity in the end. In a paranoid thriller this should spell death for audience interest; it certainly did for me. Unfortunately this flattening of the world, its events and people, leads to a numbing of its central thesis. Monroe is vindicated in the end; her husband should have listened to her. Do we care? Did the director? Did the world need another unremarkable yet serviceable film composed entirely of tropes and A24 stylistic shorthand? I don’t know honestly, but I’d like to think not…