It always feels like somebody’s watching Maika Monroe.
The latest film starring the 29-year-old “It Follows” breakout, regarded as a modern-day scream queen, is director Chloe Okuno’s feature debut, “Watcher,” co-written with Zack Ford. Now in theaters, and on demand June 21, the film sees Monroe as a former actress named Julia whose life quickly falls apart upon her move to Romania for her husband’s job. It isn’t just the language barrier upending her day-to-day existence though, but the strange neighbor she’s convinced is stalking her.
The paranoia-fueled atmospheric thriller doesn’t just deal in increasing the viewer’s adrenaline. It relies on an exploration of anxieties most, particularly women, will find relatable.
As Monroe told the Daily News, the film is “a perfect depiction of ... [a] very common feeling, I think especially women feel of being watched, and done in such a kind of Hitchcockian thriller and entertaining way.”
It is also an exercise in evolving norms for how women on screen are portrayed — a trend Monroe says started with not just “It Follows” in 2014, but fellow elevated horrors “The Babadook,” also that year, and “The Witch” in 2015.
“All those three kind of came out at a similar time and I think that horror has become really incredible with these incredible roles” for women, said the lifelong horror lover. “And it’s not what it used to be of just sex and hot girls and gore.”
The film, for instance, explores the trajectory of Julia’s marriage to Francis (Karl Glusman), from a “fun relationship” to one that “just slowly starts to deteriorate” as the former’s anxieties and isolation butt heads with the latter’s ambivalence — an arc Monroe finds quite relatable.
“I think that’s honestly one of the most heartbreaking parts about it,” said the actress also known for “The Guest” and “The Stranger.” “Not having the person closest to you believe you. ... And it’s always the hardest, because that always will make you question when it’s this person that is supposed to have your back, always. And if that person isn’t there for you, I think that it is so, so hard, and you’ll never feel more alone than that.”
Monroe contended that “Watcher” could appear a grown-up version of some anxieties explored in David Robert Mitchell’s “It Follows.” In both, for instance, her characters struggle to convince those closest to her that she’s in peril.
Perhaps the films’ similarities are in fact ideal for Monroe, who adores having made any mark on horror. (”It Follows,” for its part, is regularly cited as one of horror’s best.)
“I think it’s so cool that I’ve been able to be a part of genre films that people love and ... hopefully will be movies that people will talk about for a long time,” she said.
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