Watcher

What would you do, some blokes looking out at you, in a place that you've just moved, leaves you a bit more than bemused, seems to follow you around, when you're wandering in town, you're keen not to lose your head, though it's making you see red.

Julia becomes increasingly concerned about the attention she's receiving from a mysterious neighbour, although her pleas go unheard by both the local constabulary and her partner, leaving her increasingly isolated and psychologically challenged.

Not the most original thriller you've encountered but well made and performed and Maika Monroe may well be an actor going places.

Having enjoyed Chloe Okuno's segment in V/H/S 94 to some extent, I was exciting for her feature debut. Watcher is a film that reminds you of some of Hitchcock's works, be it in building a slow-burn suspense drama set in a mysteriously new atmosphere and in the way the lead character is established. Chloe also extracts an excellent performance from Maika Monroe who portrays the "fish out of water" protagonist. The best thing about her portrayal is that she manages to induce the same levels of anxiety in audiences too. She effortlessly makes you step into her shoes - the confusion she feels by not fully grasping the local language, that feeling of loneliness when you're in a new place spending days mostly by yourself, the burgeoning dread of having a stalker - all conveyed remarkably well.

The script doesn't have any major twists or surprises to offer, but it keeps you invested in whatever Julia is up to. The only trope I didn't enjoy is the indifferent husband, which gets repeated to terrible effect here. I truly enjoyed the film's aesthetics - be it the use of space, color grading, choice of camera angles, and sparse lighting. Cinematographer Benjamin Kirk Nielsen uses extended shots to convey a sense of paranoia. I'm pretty stoked for anything Chloe Okuno does next!

Above average thriller about people looking out of windows. I wonder where I've seen that before? Of course the entire premise would fail if they'd only buy some curtains like normal people but they don't. Maika Monroe plays the damsel in distress but her character is a bit of a misery guts and spends most of the movie scowling, sulking or frowning. Burn Gorman is perfectly creepy. The movie itself is low key and by the numbers as if it was written and directed according to a check list but it's effective for all that. There's quite a lot of Romanian language so if you watch without subtitles you miss some dialogue but I'm not sure if you miss anything important.

I have to admit that I watched this alone in my room after dark, blinds are broken so the window perfectly exposed. There are some issues with the movie, like they had curtains they could've closed. But that wouldn't have changed the fact that she was being watched. She could have made less ambitious decisions, but if she played everything "smart" then we wouldn't have a movie to review. Great visuals, does a great job keeping the viewer anxious and paranoid. It's probably nothing you haven't seen before, but it's still got enough creep factor to deserve a watch. Definitely not something I'd watch again, but it was well done.

Great visuals. They did a good job of filming every scene to make everything look super creepy. Acting is mostly good, but I absolutely hated the husband's character. I get that he had to be that way to keep the story going, but man it's frustrating.