Post by PhantomKnight on Jul 4, 2022 20:55:07 GMT -5
Every once in a while, a trailer for a movie you mostly had no idea about will pop up out of nowhere and get your interest enough to make you go see the film. Such was the case for me when the trailer for Watcher played in front of Men.
This film is sort of in the tradition of Rear Window, but instead of the main character Julia (Maika Monroe) witnessing a murder across the street, she sees a mysterious figure seemingly gazing back at her, and thus begins a terrifying experience for Julia as she comes to believe her new watcher/stalker may be the serial killer who's currently preying upon women in Bucharest, where she and her husband just moved to. In terms of the story, what with its Rear Window influences, Watcher doesn't offer up anything particularly fresh or unique, so a lot of its potential success rides on its style. And to the movie's credit, writer/director Chloe Okuno has a firm grasp on style and delivers an appropriately atmospheric aura to the film as a whole. A lot of the time, Okuno can elicit a pretty creepy and off-putting feeling by just being rather simplistic in her framing and overall camerawork, not to mention use of silence. Watcher is very much in the slow-burn tradition of thrillers, and it really does take its time unraveling its story, which serves to pretty effectively show how Julia is losing her mind over this whole situation. Concurrently, Maika Monroe offers up a very strong performance and easily sells Julia's sense of mounting desperation and fear -- something that's also gotten across well by way of Chloe Okuno reflecting Julia's sense of relative isolation in the cold way in which she films/captures these locations, which in turn makes Julia feel all the more vulnerable. Chloe Okuno really does have a clear vision in mind for this film, and it absolutely comes through.
But is the movie's sense of style strong enough to qualify it as a success?
Honestly, not quite. Because the fact of the matter is that the script feels like it could've used one or two re-writes to really tighten things up. As it stands, it seems slightly repetitive, because the same conversations seem to happen over and over and because the movie doesn't do the best job of making these characters particularly interesting, that makes things come across as just a bit monotonous as well. As a result, the climax lacks the punch it could have had if the emotional investment was there. Still, that being said, Watcher is hardly a movie I'd call 'bad' by any stretch. It's just not quite as good as it could've been, maybe, though still worth a look. Or, I suppose -- a 'watch'.
**1/2 /****
