Watcher DVD and Blu-ray Review

4 star simmering and tense stalker tale.

The Watcher is a 2022 American psychological thriller film written and directed by Chloe Okuno, in a very impressive directorial and screenwriting feature debut. It is based on an original screenplay by Zack Ford.

It is presented here on DVD and Blu-ray from 6th February 2023 courtesy of Mediumrare Entertainment.

“There’s this guy that lives across the street and he’s always looking over here.”

Francis (Karl Glusman – The Neon Demon, Please Baby Please), a marketing consultant and his wife Julia (Maika Monroe – The Guest, It Follows) have just moved to Romania as a job opened up for him at the Bucharest office. His mother is Romanian and he is fluent in the language, but Julia is still trying to learn the basics.

They have a lovely apartment, but it has a huge picture window which displays the entire room and no curtains. Julia soon becomes disturbed by the man across the street (Burn Gorman – Pacific Rim, Enola Holmes) who always seems to be looking across at their window. Her fear isn’t helped by Francis, who spends all his time working and keeps rationlising away her fears. She befriends her neighbour Irina (Madalina Anea – The Hard Way, Exodux To Shanghai), who understands her loneliness.

Isolated by her lack of grasp of the language, her fears grow when she visits the cinema and leaves because of someone sitting directly behind her, who she then believes follows her to the supermarket across the street. It also doesn’t help that a serial killer known as “The Spider” is stalking the city decapitating women. Growing increasingly desperate, are her fears justified, or is she losing her mind?

“Everytime I look over there, he’s just standing in his window and it’s like he’s staring right at me.”

Watcher is a very well written and directed film and makes for a very tense watch. The use of the rainy and grey streets of Bucharest make the tension almost palapable and at times you feel almost as vulnerable as Julia.

Maika Monroe puts in a standout performance and her fear feels very real. The way the scene is set is clever too, when they do finally put up curtains, rather than being reassuring it seems all the scarier because you can’t see what’s going on outside.

While it doesn’t necessarily bring anything new to the table, it’s a great watch and the ending, while predictable, is also extremely satisfying. This is a really good thriller and well worth adding to your collection.

“I think he was watching me before. I just had a sense that someone was always behind me, even when I was alone.”