Chloe Okuno's Watcher is an effective paranoid chiller that definitely has points to make about the balance women have to maintain between a justified fear of potentially dangerous men and the social pressure to prevent other men from feeling discomfort as a result of that fear, but — to its credit — makes them with a fair amount of restraint, and through craft and style rather than resorting to the polemical directness that would sink a lesser movie. Okuno's primary goal is to create tension, and from the opening credit shot she does so with a voyeuristic camera, an alienating and rain-soaked Bucharest, and suggestive ambiguity.
Maika Monroe anchors yet another female-centered Sundance genre film (literally none of the seven narrative features I saw for this year's festival had a single male lead between them, so it's high praise to say that Monroe's work here is probably second only to Rebecca Hall's in Resurrection) as an American actress following her husband on a work assignment to Romania. The stress of navigating a new language, city, and culture are compounded by news coverage of a serial rapist and murderer stalking the city, and after Monroe notices someone in a nearby building seemingly peering into her new apartment's picture windows, she begins to believe she's being followed.
The best thing Watcher does is make Monroe's fears and anxieties entirely plausible while also making the unwillingness of her husband, the police, and her neighbors to act on those fears similarly understandable. The dissonance between her instincts and her evidence put her in an impossible situation, and Okuno and Monroe stew the audience in that tension with solid effect — a particular moment on a subway car involving a plastic bag is a standout.
I liked this film in the moment, but Okuno's slow-burning atmosphere and expert use of place — her Bucharest is handsomely shot but as cold and unwelcoming as an ornate gravestone in the rain — has only grown on me in the days since. As far as I can tell, it hasn't found distribution yet, but if it does, Watcher would be a fun one to see late at night in a sparsely populated theater.
Watcher (Chloe Okuno, 2022)
- DarkImbecile
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- Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2013 6:24 pm
- Location: Albuquerque, NM
- DarkImbecile
- Ask me about my visible cat breasts
- Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2013 6:24 pm
- Location: Albuquerque, NM
- brundlefly
- Joined: Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:55 pm
Re: The Films of 2022
Hello, welcome, goodbye.
If your intake has been too dense, twisty, or scatterbrained as of late, this one sees you. Its contemplation of the most fundamental movie action follows such a well-trod path that any extraneous elaboration jolts wrong, any clumsy note breaks a spell – not inappropriate that Karl Glusman’s better when seen than heard from, but still – and every dull moment reveals its rut. So bravo to Okuno and Benjamin Kirk Nielsen and the production design team for making something so sure and satisfying. For a project navigating a balance of attention, this is invitingly perfect eye-glue, obviously considered yet never hyperattentive. Monroe’s restraint matches everything around her, Gorman is perfectly revealed. It’s 2022, and awards for Best Performance by a Plastic Item are long overdue; that multi-use bag in Watcher should give Cronenberg’s plum chockablocks a run for their money.
If your intake has been too dense, twisty, or scatterbrained as of late, this one sees you. Its contemplation of the most fundamental movie action follows such a well-trod path that any extraneous elaboration jolts wrong, any clumsy note breaks a spell – not inappropriate that Karl Glusman’s better when seen than heard from, but still – and every dull moment reveals its rut. So bravo to Okuno and Benjamin Kirk Nielsen and the production design team for making something so sure and satisfying. For a project navigating a balance of attention, this is invitingly perfect eye-glue, obviously considered yet never hyperattentive. Monroe’s restraint matches everything around her, Gorman is perfectly revealed. It’s 2022, and awards for Best Performance by a Plastic Item are long overdue; that multi-use bag in Watcher should give Cronenberg’s plum chockablocks a run for their money.