Major spoilers ahead for Watcher
Maika Monroe has finally started receiving the kind of praise she deserves as a steadily working actress with an impressive filmography of excellent horror movies. Last year she starred in the breakout indie horror film Longlegs, which seems to have finally cemented her scream queen status.
Before Longlegs, there was Watcher, a tense Hitchcockian thriller directed by Chloe Okuno that just started streaming on Netflix. Watcher doesn't reinvent the wheel of psychological thrillers, but it stands apart from similar films in the genre thanks to stunning direction from Okuno and a heartbreakingly relatable performance by Monroe.
Julia (Monroe) has recently moved to Bucharest with her husband, Francis (Karl Glusman), after he accepts a new marketing job. Not long after their arrival in this new country, Julia starts to sense that someone is watching her. Looking out her window one night, she notices the silhouette of a man (Burn Gorman) peering directly at her from one of the flats across the street, and things only escalate from there.
The importance of the film's central theme
As if it's not bad enough that Julia is isolated and alone in a new country where she doesn't know anyone or speak the language, it's doubly frustrating for her that no one will listen or believe her about being stalked. And not long after they arrive, Julia and Francis learn there is an active serial killer nearby known as "The Spider," who targets women.
Her husband consistently gaslights her throughout the movie, suggesting that perhaps this man she's so concerned about is merely watching the woman who is watching him, nor does he seem to take the threat of The Spider seriously, perhaps because he knows the killer isn't targeting men. Francis doesn't make an effort to include her in conversations with his colleagues, at one point even making a joke at her expense in Romanian right in front of her, unaware that Julia has slowly been teaching herself the language.
The cops prove themselves useless, refusing to take Julia's claims seriously, which is especially egregious with a serial killer on the loose. In fact, the only guy in the movie that winds up being of any help to Julia is her neighbor's ex-boyfriend, who accompanies her to the stalker's residence to warn him away.
Okuno does a great job of creating a palpable sense of isolation and distance Julia feels. In one interview, she referenced Rosemary's Baby as inspiration, calling attention to the way that film would often isolate Mia Farrow from a wide shot by creating "a frame within a frame," a technique she used to great effect in Watcher. Example: The scene where Julia is framed by the kitchen window cutout while watching her husband and his colleagues at the dinner table.
The camera gets closer to Julia as the movie progresses, emphasizing her increasing sense of paranoia. And while some might have found the lack of Romanian subtitles frustrating, it further emphasizes Julia's alienation. She can't understand what they're saying and neither can we (or at least us non-Romanian speakers).
As a woman, even though I've never been in Julia's exact predicament, I could relate to her frustration. Our society has a bad habit of dismissing women when they speak up about harassment and Julia's story is a perfect example of that. She intuits that something is amiss and even has security footage on her side that Daniel has been following her around, but no one believes her.
In fact, her stalker, a man revealed to be Daniel Weber (Burn Gorman), eventually turns the table on her and goes to the police himself to file a report on her and who do you think the men in Julia's life are more inclined to believe? How often have we seen stories of cops or the general public siding with the aggressor just because he's a man? It's a frustrating and dehumanizing experience, especially in Julia's case. Francis frequently patronizes her and makes her feel silly about her fears, playing into the sexist narrative about female hysteria.
Julia's climactic showdown with her stalker
In the film's final act, Julia gets on a subway train and finds herself face-to-face with Daniel. It's one of the movie's best scenes, incredibly tense and well-acted by Monroe and Gorman. Julia senses that Daniel is carrying around the head of one of his latest victims in the plastic bag beside him and later, it turns out she was right. He is The Spider.
That night, at the apartment complex, Daniel plays music in Irina's apartment to make Julia believe her friend might have returned. When Julia goes to investigate, she's greeted by a grisly sight: Irina's dead, decapitated body. Daniel springs his trap and takes Julia captive.
When Julia hears her husband arrive home, she cries out for help, causing Daniel to slit her throat in retaliation. It genuinely seems like the end of the line for Julia. Throat gushing blood, she attempts to escape her attacker by crawling into the living room toward the place she knows that Irina keeps her gun hidden. She doesn't make it in time.
Julia passes out and Daniel, being a total creep, lies down beside her so he can watch the life drain from her eyes. By the time Francis realizes that his wife is in trouble and goes into the hallway to investigate, Daniel is already on his way out. It looks like Francis might confront him, or even save his wife, but as has been the case the entire movie, Julia has to do everything herself.
She apparently faked her death for long enough to put Daniel at ease. Just when it looks like he's going to escape, she gets Irina's gun and shoots him twice. The final shot of the movie shows Julia standing in her neighbor's doorway, slowly turning to look at her husband with perhaps the most loaded stare in cinema history. It's clearly a huge, "I told you so," "you should have believed me," "you suck," and, probably, "I want a divorce."
Given that the scene before Julia confronts Daniel has her packing her bags, I think it's clear she's getting the hell out of Bucharest and catching the first flight back to New York.
Watcher is now streaming on Netflix.