Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Watcher Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson October 7, 2022

Feelings of isolation and disconnect of living in a foreign country are given chilling and effective treatment in Chloe Okuno's debut feature Watcher (2022). Julia (Maika Monroe of The Guest and It Follows) is accompanying her Romanian-American husband Francis (Karl Glusman) to Bucharest after the couple lived together in New York. Francis has received a promotion in his marketing position at an ad company which has required him to relocate to a Bucharest office. Julia had tried becoming a movie actress but that hasn't worked out for her so far. She and Francis are leasing a spacious apartment where she's alone all day and for most of the evening. Francis's colleagues don't speak much English so Julia wonders what they're all saying when she hosts them for dinner one night. Fortunately, Julia's next-door neighbor Irina (Mădălina Anea) speaks fluent English and invites her over for wine during a relaxing evening. But unfortunately, Julia doesn't really have anything to do during the day so occupies her time wandering around town. Francis and Julia's apartment has very tall and large windows so she spends a lot of her time at home gazing across the other high rise. She nearly always sees a figure standing in a window opposite her unit. Is this person just peering outside or staring at her?

When Julia saunters into a repertory cinema where Donen's Charade (1963) is playing, she spots a man in one of the back rows move up and sit directly behind her. He leans forward and she can literally feel him breathing down her neck. Deeply uncomfortable, she gets up and exits the theatre. When Julia enters a supermarket, the ex-smoker puts a couple packs of cigarettes in her basket. She notices the same man enter the store. The two play a game of cat and mouse across the aisles. Julia can't take it anymore and sneaks behind one of the store's employees-only doors where she asks a clerk for the rear exit. She later tells Francis about the incidents and the couple return to the grocery store so Julia can point out the man on CCTV footage. “Look!” she states to Francis. “He’s staring right at me!” “Or maybe,” Francis responds, “he’s staring at the woman who’s staring at him?” While Francis is initially concerned and supportive of his wife's fears, he never completely believes that a stalker is after her. Julia's paranoia is heightened because there have been recent murders of female victims committed by a serial killer known as The Spider. Julia asks Irina's estranged boyfriend Cristian (Daniel Nuta) if he will go over with her to the other high rise and knock on the watcher's door so she can identify him. Cristian pounds on the door several times but there's no answer. When Julia knocks, an old man answers the door. As Julia's leaving, she notices the same man from the supermarket return to his apartment. Her half-desperate attempt backfires because Weber (Burn Gorman), the watcher, arrives at her door with a police officer claiming that she's always watching him and pestering his father.

Okuno has said in interviews that John Carpenter is one of her influences, which is apropos since Carpenter's 1978 Warner Bros. telefilm Someone's Watching Me! bears a formal influence on Watcher. TV producer Leigh Michaels (Lauren Hutton) is like Julia in that she's also an outsider entering a new town, having moved from New York to Los Angeles. Leigh also has a watcher supposedly spying on her from a high rise. Julia and Leigh are each smart and strong women who's stories about stalkers are either not believed or discredited by men. There are some differences in the two productions, though, that can be attributed to the two wide and disparate periods that they were made. For example, the voyeur in Someone's Watching Me! makes frequent crank calls to Leigh and sends suspicious gifts right to her door. Francis and Julia don't have a landline. Also, the watcher doesn't know Julia's mobile number. In addition, he doesn't send her "presents." Since Carpenter was filming a TV movie, he didn't design his compositions with a widescreen image in mind. By contrast, Okuno and her cinematographer Benjamin Kirk Nielsen frame Julia amidst a large space and use the side edges of the frame. Nielsen also employs wide-angle lenses. One commonality is that Carpenter and Okuno later shrink the cinematic space so it feels like the prowlers are enclosing on their prey.

Watcher Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

IFC Midnight's new release of Watcher comes on an MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-25 sans a slipcover. The movie appears in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.00:1. I was lucky to see Watcher in the cinema during its theatrical run and this Blu-ray transfer replicates my viewing experience. You'll notice that Nielsen gives the image a tinge of cyan inside the apartment as Julia gets up and looks out her window (see Screenshot #13). For the morning after, Nielsen gives the bedroom interior a washed-out appearance (see frame grab #15). Damon Wise, the Film Editor for Deadline Hollywood, aptly summarized the film's general aesthetics: "Nielsen's palette is muted, with lots of soft grey and green pastels that heighten the occasional splash of red, like jam on toast, a glass of wine, and the crimson dress Julia wears on an abortive date night." Several of the daytime exteriors around Bucharest display grey, teal, and turquoise. In an interview with Daily Dead, Okuno says that Nielsen and her used Hawk Vantage One lenses with the purpose of separating Julia from her background. That's also why Neilsen employs shallow focus so Julia stands out from blurry figures and objects. Since what Julia sees in the opposite apartment is frequent, it's also important to point out how Nielsen lit those shots. The DP told Caleb Hammond of MovieMaker magazine that his crew occasionally put a green screen in as a backdrop for the watcher's apartment and also a translight, which he describes as "a backdrop that you put outside the window of the set. Ours was a Rosco SoftDrop." Nielsen explained to Hammond that he would utilize "an LED tube and light him from the top, from the side and from the background to silhouette him — all these different scenarios." You can see this lighting scheme in Screenshot #4. The technical authoring on this disc could have been superior with a maxed out bitrate. IFC has encoded the feature at a mean video bitrate of 21971 kbps. My video score is 4.25/5.00.

Eight chapters accompany the 96-minute film.

Watcher Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

IFC has supplied an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround (3741 kbps, 24-bit) and an English Audio Description Track, which is rendered here as a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo mix (2015 kbps, 24-bit). Much of Watcher's dialogue is in English but there's also Romanian, which Francis translates at least sometime for Julia. Okuno made a deliberate decision not to subtitle the Romanian dialogue since she wanted her audience to assume Julia's position. Spoken words are clear and crisp. Dialogue is sometimes soft-spoken but still audible. The 5.1 mix only occasionally makes use of the surround channels. Composer Nathan Halpern crafted an eerie score that adds sufficient atmosphere to the sound track. Halpern's unusual instrumental mix consists of piano, guitarviol, electronics, and an aquaphone. Robert Pycior performed on cello, viola, and violin. (He also contributed some additional music.) V. S. Nabokov handled the percussion.

Optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles accompany the feature.

Watcher Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary by Director Chloe Okuno and Editor Michael Block - this feature-length track has director Okuno in discussion with her editor about making Watcher. Okuno and Block especially delve into the different versions of scenes that were part of various cuts of the movie. Okuno also talks about the performances, filming conditions, different takes, and the shooting locales in Bucharest. This is a lively commentary with no gaps. In English, not subtitled.

• Bonus Previews - IFC Films trailers for Hatching, See for Me, The Dry, and The Rental. Unfortunately, no trailer for Watcher has been included on this disc.

Watcher Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Chloe Okuno's directorial debut feature Watcher (2022) is heavily indebted to Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) as well as the works of John Carpenter and David Fincher but still stands on its own as a very fine indie horror thriller. I've been a fan of Maika Monroe since seeing her in Mitchell's It Follows (2014) and she doesn't disappoint here either. She conveys the loneliness of residing in a foreign nation and an existential dread of being watched by a possible serial killer. IFC Midnight has done justice to Benjamin Kirk Nielsen's moody cinematography, though I would have liked to see a higher bitrate. I was pleasantly surprised that IFC recorded a commentary with Okuno and her editor. A WARM RECOMMENDATION for this chiller!