WATCHER
The film I have chosen this year as my most underrated of 2022 is director Chloe Okuno's “Watcher”. While the film does not reinvent the wheel, personally I think it is a superior thriller that should have garnered much more attention than it did. The imdb describes the movie like this: “A young American woman moves with her husband to Bucharest, and begins to suspect that a stranger who watches her from the apartment building across the street may be a local serial killer decapitating women.” From this synopsis, you can no doubt tell that “Watcher” is Hitchcockian in nature, with “Rear Window” being the obvious template, but that is essentially Okuno's starting point. What Okuno does so well, and why “Watcher” is so successful, is that she makes you feel the incredible isolation and loneliness Julia herself is feeling. Being in a new country where she knows no-one, where they speak a language she doesn't understand, living in a giant and somewhat empty apartment that is anything but home, you understand why Julia feels the way she does. She is a good wife, moving out of her comfort zone for her husband's career, but he is not a good husband in the fact that once they hit Romania, he does little for Julia to make her transition smooth and that she is okay in the situation. He is constantly leaving her for work or work functions, or when he does come home with friends, they speak in Romanian (which Okuno leaves unsubtitled so we feel Julia's frustration), further isolating Julia. The more scared, terrified, or potentially paranoid Julia gets, Francis (the husband) does the worst thing possible by not believing Julia or attempting to understand how she could possibly feel this way.
Maika Monroe is outstanding playing Julia. She makes you believe and feel everything that her character does, particularly when she gets close to a nervous breakdown. I have said this many times before, but I just do not understand how Maika Monroe is not a massive star. She certainly has the talent, not to mention the looks, so the only thing I can think of is that it is a conscious decision of Monroe herself to not go down that rabbit hole, and to stay just on the fringes of Hollywood, doing great stuff in smaller, independent productions. Anyway, like I said, she is phenomenal in “Watcher”, and while Julia is often seen in a fragile way throughout, she ends up proving herself to be a strong female who doesn't need a man to protect her.
I really loved the way Chloe Okuno tells her story with “Watcher”. She has paced the film much slower than is the norm for today's cinema. She has shot the film, along with her cinematographer Benjamin Kirk Nielsen, in a very classic, old fashioned style, that just works wonders for the film. Through both the style and the pace, Okuno is able to wring out every drop of suspense possible in this paranoid thriller, and it is a seriously suspenseful film. Two scenes in particular, one on the subway and the other in a cinema, are white-knuckle suspense through and through. When the scenes are over, you don't even realise that you had forgotten to breathe. The scene on the train is particularly impressive in that it has the ability to change your opinion on and feel sorry for the neighbour that Julia thinks is terrorising her. You see the story from his perspective and suddenly realise that, in fact, Julia may be paranoid, and her isolation from everything she knows and feels safe around, is causing these delusions. The inclusion of a plastic bag that the neighbour is holding makes the scenes unbearably tense throughout too.
While Chloe Okuno is more interested in suspense with “Watcher”, it does come with a very bloody finale, which was almost perfect, until the final two minutes when it sadly when a little Hollywood. It is the only real miss-step in this very entertaining and superior chiller. It is a shame that it hasn't received the exposure that it deserves, but it goes without saying that I look forward to whatever Chloe Okuno does next.
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