Watcher: Thriller Traverses Territory Covered by Master Filmmakers, For Better or Worse

By Thom Ernst

Rating: B

A young American actress follows her partner to Budapest so that he might pursue a career opportunity. Upon arrival, they discover that the neighbourhood they've moved into is experiencing a rash of killings involving young women left alone in their apartments.

So much for settling in comfortably.

Watcher is a successful thriller, good enough to hold viewers through its three acts and into the final scene. But the reward for sticking around might not be the payoff viewers were waiting for. Neither is it all that original.

Director Chloe Okuno, who also nabs credit for a script based on Zack Ford's unproduced screenplay, uses a catch-n-release approach to touch on familiar plots and scenarios from a pantheon of psychological thrillers without ever landing on any film long enough to invite more than a casual distraction. But they are still distractions and ones that don’t so much defy expectations as they vaguely skirt around them.

The man, Francis (Karl Glusman), has landed a job in the city, which means Julia (Maika Monroe) has forfeited her acting career. The extent of Julia's sacrifice is unclear. Still, if the couple had reached a compromise, it is a compromise that falls in Francis' favour.

Friendless, unable to speak the language, and wary of the local attitudes towards outsiders—particularly women—Julia develops a low-grade dose of xenophobia. And again… there's that whole serial killer thing to consider.

Things get an uneasy start for the young couple when their cab driver, speaking Hungarian, references Julia, which has Francis, no stranger to the language, leaping to her defense. The driver ducks behind an off-handed explanation of having made an innocent observation—albeit an observation based on cultural biases and assumptions.

Julia will experience similar innocent cultural observations over the next few hours and days. Some will be expressed through the abrupt delivery of untranslated words, with frustrated glances and guarded interactions. Julia, independent, opinionated, and not above complaining about the apartment, like an uncooperative entrance hallway light that doesn't always go on when you hit the switch. (If you introduce a gun in act one….)

Julia is the kind of demanding American woman that would put old-world thinkers like her Hungarian taxi driver, landlady, and neighbours on high alert.

Julia is left alone during the day as Francis heads to the office, spending time with colleagues, sometimes working well into the night. To occupy herself, Julia stares out from her apartment into the windows of an adjacent building. Cue shades of Rear Window (1954), Body Double (1984), and Night Watch (1973). She notices a dark shadowy figure staring back. At first, the figure watches from behind a pulled curtain and then stands in full view, still just a shadowed figure. And then, one night, the figure waves.

Julia's paranoia rises to points of absurdity—like assuming someone who waves at her to be a potential serial killer. She goes from shut-in to trailing suspicious men into basement sex clubs, harassing her neighbours, displaying irrational and sometimes embarrassing behaviours in public, and calling the police for seemingly mundane infractions.

Though not pointedly xenophobic, there are enough gruff encounters and dark alleys to root for Julia to pack her things and head back to the comfort of L.A.—which, as her paranoia increases, is a conclusion Julia also reaches.

Like Repulsion (1965)—a Polanski comparison seems appropriate given the film's European setting—the viewer is left to decide if Julia's fears are legit or fanciful. We aren't to forget that Julia was once an actor, a career that the film suggests lends itself to exaggerations, fantasy, and hysterics.

Monroe and Glusman are excellent in their roles, with Monroe doing the heavy work. Her Julia is self-assured, gradually shifting away from trusting to suspicious. At the same time, Glusman lands solidly in place as a man who talks big about support and delivers small. Burn Gorman, Gabriela But, and Madelina Anea fill out the supporting cast.

Watcher. Directed by Chloe Okuno. Starring Karl Glusman, Maika Monroe, Burn Gorman, Gabriela But, and Madelina Anea. Opens in selected theatres June 3.