Ahead of “Watcher’s” world premiere at Sundance, writer-director Chloe Okuno told us that she’s “always admired true psychological thrillers that are dedicated to getting us as much as possible into the head of our protagonist – making us feel everything that they are feeling.” Her tension-filled directorial debut successfully gets us into the head of its protagonist, and it’s a terrifying, maddening place to be.
“Watcher” tells the story of Julia (Maika Monroe), an American who moves to Bucharest with her boyfriend, Francis (Karl Glusman). Like her breakout role in 2014 horror pic “It Follows,” Monroe is playing a woman who is being pursued by an unseen, unidentifiable tormentor — at least at first. A serial killer is on the loose, and Julia becomes convinced that she’s being watched by a neighbor across the street. She becomes increasingly worried that she could be the murderer’s next target, a fear that’s minimized, mocked, and ignored by almost everyone, including her boyfriend.
Besides finding herself in an eerie game of cat-and-mouse that everyone else denies is occurring, Julia is struggling to adapt to life in a new country. Francis speaks Romanian. She does not, and is consequently perpetually confused about what exactly is happening — she can’t understand and she can’t be understood. She’s always having to apologize for something, and is understandably exhausted by all of the miscommunications that make up her day. Julia is trying to learn Romanian, but it’s taking time. As frustrating as the language barrier would be under normal circumstances, it’s magnified exponentially because she sees herself as being in danger and can’t get the help she needs.
A former actress reevaluating what she wants to do for a job, Julia agrees to move to Bucharest when Francis, who works in marketing, gets a promotion. He spends his day at work and with colleagues. She is listless and alone, and when she begins to suspect that she’s being stalked, she becomes uneasy at home and outside of it.
Okuno fully immerses us in Julia’s world, where potential threats lurk around every corner. It’s exhausting. But the terrifying prospect of being attacked at any moment isn’t all Julia is contending with. Making matters infinitely worse is the gaslighting that’s going on. When she comes face-to-face with the man she believes has been following her, Julia is made to feel paranoid and pressured to distrust her instincts — even by her own partner. He’s inconvenienced by what he perceives to be her hysteria and paranoia.
In her interview with us, Okuno said that she was drawn to the “simplicity” of a story of “a woman who is not believed.” She explained, “It can be a very devastating experience, and one that many people have probably encountered at one time or another. Women in particular frequently are confronted with this sort of patronizing stance from the people around them. We learn to modify our emotions so that we cannot be written off as overly emotional, even if those emotions are justified,” she emphasized. “It becomes a very exhausting cycle. This is a movie that explores that within a more heightened genre scenario, but the core frustrations are ones that I’ve experienced personally and was interested in exploring.”
“Watcher” is now in theaters. Zack Ford co-wrote its script.
