We continue our 31 days of frights with Watcher from 2022. As a serial killer stalks the city, a young actress who just moved to town with her boyfriend notices a mysterious stranger watching her from across the street.
Damn, this is indeed a scary movie. What could have been another basic thriller turns into something much more due to a tight script and fantastic cinematography. Maika Monroe is excellent as Julia. Every chance I get, I talk about Maika Monroe. You might recognize her from Longlegs or It Follows. She is amazing in everything that she is in, and when I hear she’s going to be in something, I seek it out.
Julia has moved to an entirely different country without knowing the language, and that is terrifying enough already. The movie makes you feel what Julia feels. When other people speak around her, there are no subtitles. At first, I thought there was something wrong with my Blu-ray. The movie makes the choice not to let the audience know what people are talking about, just like Julia.
Julia feels cut off from everyone, and it leaves her more vulnerable when she thinks she’s being followed. We embark on this journey with her, questioning whether everything is just in her head. The tension is severely off the charts here . Julia goes to a movie theatre, and a man sits right behind her, and it’s terrifying. She is at the market and feels she’s being followed, and it is terrifying. The whole movie, we are questioning our own sanity. We don’t get any answers right up until the very end, and it is honestly one of the best endings in a horror film in recent years.
Watcher reminds me of a horror film from the ’60s. A movie where, because they lacked technology, they had to be smart about how they filmed things. Using shadows and actual set pieces to tell the story. There isn’t much blood here or jump scares, and we still feel a shiver down our spine. We put ourselves in Julia’s shoes. What if we were being watched? What if no one believed us? What would we do? The movie never lets us let our guard down and feels like a classic Hitchcock film. It is tense, smart, and definitely worth checking out.
Watcher is available to watch on Netflix, Tubi, and Shudder.
Come back tomorrow for more spooky reviews.
