At a cultural moment when the rights of women are under direct attack, the new film "Watcher" feels unnervingly well-timed. Using the genre of the psychological thriller, "Watcher" skillfully examines the experience of unsettled isolation that often comes simply from being a woman in a world that won't listen and won't believe.
Directed by Chloe Okuno from a script co-written by Okuno and Zack Ford, the film stars Maika Monroe in a powerful performance as Julia, a young woman who moves to Bucharest, Romania, when her husband, Francis (Karl Glusman), is transferred for work. A former actress trying to decide what to do next, Julia spends most of her days alone in a place where she does not speak the language. Convinced that a man (Burn Gorman) with an apartment across the way is spying on and even following her around the city, Julia's growing anxiety is compounded by news reports of a brutal serial killer targeting women around her age. And yet no one, including Francis, will believe her concerns about feeling increasingly unsafe.
Having premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival and now playing in wide release and set for a VOD release June 21, "Watcher" is the feature debut for Okuno, whose work includes 2014 short film "Slut" and a segment in 2021's anthology "V/H/S/94." The screenplay for "Watcher" originally was set in New York City, but it was relocated to Bucharest for production reasons; Okuno takes full advantage of the city's mix of old-world romanticism and Soviet-era gloom. She even cast an actual museum security guard who had chased her away for taking photographs to do the same to Monroe in the film.
