Director Chloe Okuno and lead actress Maika Monroe bring a fresh femme perspective to this heart-stopping 70s-style psychological thriller dripping with Hitchcockian voyeurism and rampant paranoia.
Composed and stylized with uncompromisingly elegant aesthetics Watcher feels like an artifact of a different era... A stunning gaslighting whodunit.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2022
Watcher 2022
Maika Monroe stars as Julia, a young American wife left to her own devices in Bucharest where her Romanian-speaking husband has just started a new job. The aspiring actress suspects a creepy neighbour of stalking her, but when her concerns are dismissed and she starts investigating herself the question becomes, who is watching who?
“In Chloe Okuno’s stylish debut the title refers not just to one person but two: The watched becomes the watcher, the stalker and stalked swapping places throughout the course of this chilly psychological thriller. Working in the vein of 70s-style horror, Okuno’s Watcher is in dialogue with films such as Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby, nods to Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession with its foreboding European setting, and features a Hitchcock blond in heroine Julia. But those films about vulnerable women caught in voyeuristic traps were all directed by men, and with Okuno, a female writer-director, telling the story, it’s a very different result, one that’s emotionally and ethically complex but undeniable in its bold clarity…
This beautifully crafted jewel of a throwback thriller signifies Okuno as a talent to watch, but furthermore, it pushes the viewer to question what, and who, we choose to believe and why.” — Katie Walsh, LA Times