WATCHER was my favorite horror movie of 2022, which was an absurdly stacked year for horror. As we hit the halfway point, it’s remarkable to look back on this decade so far and see just how much of an embarrassment of riches it has been for the genre. I’ve seen some criticize it for just being about stalking and for the fact that it doesn’t reinvent the wheel. But it is so textured.
The movie stars Maika Monroe as an American woman who has just moved to Romania with her husband. Already, she is isolated and vulnerable. She not only lives in a new city, but a new country, and one where she does not speak the language. Her husband is her only real connection, and if something happens and your husband doesn’t believe you and that connection is threatened, that is terrifying. The horror here is so simple. There is a man in an apartment across the street watching her. His window is positioned to look directly into hers, and in classical REAR WINDOW tradition, she only notices him watching because *she’s* watching her neighbors as well, left alone and bored with nothing better to do.
This film escalates beautifully. This man follows her everywhere, he always catches her alone because she is always alone. But his actions aren’t aggressive and he plays innocent so well that after a certain point the audience begins to wonder, even if just for a moment, if he really is stalking her at all. It plays so well with that gaslighting, the stalker and even her husband telling her that her fears aren’t justified, that there’s nothing to worry about, that it begins to gaslight us as viewers.
You feel eyes on Monroe in every frame. Her performance is fantastic. My single favorite scene is a scene on a train, which is just a conversation between two people. And in any other movie, you would know what to expect from that scene, when it is finally the two of them alone with one another, and all illusions can be dropped. But that’s not what happens, no mask is lifted, no charade dropped, and it’s the worst and most unsettling thing that could happen to her at that time, especially as her eyes turn to a bag on the man’s lap that’s been sitting there through the whole scene, and both she and the viewer slowly realize what’s inside that bag. Chloe Okuno directed the Hell out of this thing. The tension is masterful. It’s hard to talk about without giving too much away, because it is still so underseen. It’s a small story, but the way it unfolds is beautifully done, right from the POV of the opening credits. I can’t say enough good things about WATCHER. Just watch it.