It Watches

This could have been a really good film if they had employed qualified actors. Low budget or not there no excuse for this level of crapness. But the story was sound and that saddens me more that it could have been great.

The cinematographic choices in this movie are odd. It is shot in a found footage style, but it feels like a film student tooling around with a camera. The film starts off with the camera outside of a car, pointed at the characters but you can't see them because of the sun glaring of the windshield. Weird.

Andre is tasked with house sitting a stranger's house and is told to document it with his hand-held camera to see if anything comes back to him because he has amnesia. This house is said to be creepy by the character and his friend but it just seems like any single dude's house complete with black leather couch and black entertainment set. It has mannequins covered in drop cloth and masks. Sort of unsettling, sure.

What ensues is a drag of the audience's patience until a weird neighbor shows up. This is the only time the whole movie anything exciting happens, the rest is a jumble of nonsense. There's a twist but it isn't a clever I didn't see that coming sort of twist. It almost seems like the ending got changed last minute and they didn't want to reshoot scenes to make things make sense.

There's a lot of drugs and drinking in this film, not a big deal to me but it would've been interesting to lean into how being intoxicated altered Andre's perception of things happening to him. He seems pretty sober as things are going on, and high for a short time. We could've seen him watching things on the camera and freaking out while high.

This film is about a man who, after just recently having an accident that has left him with a foggy memory, choses to help out a friend by house sitting. The house is a bit creepy and after smoking some strong weed and downing some alcohol the house transitions from creepy to scary. What is going on in this house?

Being a horror fan can make a viewer become jaded. We are constantly looking for fresh material but all too often you end up seeing the same story lines with just the locations, actors and maybe some of the circumstances being changed. It really can turn you into a harsh critic and I think this is some of what is happening with this film. It is low budget and it's been done before.

I didn't think it was all that bad. Like I said, it is low budget but I didn't think that the quality, while lacking, was awful. The actors had both good and bad moments and I thought the story was interesting. I want to give credit where credit is due and I think this one deserves a little more respect that it is getting.

I had no idea what "It Watches" was about prior to sitting down and watching it. However, it was more than enough that it was a horror movie to have me interested. And when reading the synopsis on IMDb, then I will admit that my interest was a bit more peaked.

The story in "It Watches" is about Andre, who is asked to house-sit a big house for a friend. However, he quickly finds that someone or something is in the house with him, as strange sounds and even stranger occurrences take place in the house.

"It Watches" did have all the right ingredients to make for a good suspenseful thriller / horror movie, however, it just turned out to be too generic and predictable; playing it safe on every parameter and giving the audience nothing new that hasn't already been done countless times before in other similar movies.

Director Dave Parker did however manage to set up a good atmosphere and had the movie progress at a nicely paced speed.

And actor Ivan Djurovic really carried the movie tremendously well with his performance. This movie was all his, given his performance, and he really outshone everyone else on the cast list. Now, I can't claim to be familiar with his previous work, although I have watched the 2011 "51" movie, but I can't recall his performance here.

"It Watches" is good enough for a single viewing, however, it offers nothing new to the genre, and chances are that if you are a seasoned veteran to the horror / thriller genre, like I am, then you will not be overly impressed with what you see here. This is the type of movie that you watch once, and then bag and tag it, never to watch it again.

I am rating "It Watches" four out of ten stars. And that below-mediocre rating is solely given because the movie didn't bring any surprises to the genre, nor did it bring anything new to the genre, and it was just too predictable.

It Watches was a pleasant surprise. Although a bit of a slow burn start, it kept me guessing through out the entire film and had a full filling ending. The director (Dave Parker) succeeded in making something new and interesting. The lead actor (Ivan Djurovic) carried the movie well, looking forward to seeing him in more. All and all was worth a watch.