Skip to main content

"Watcher" dir. by Chloe Okuno


"Watcher"

Where I watched it: Shudder

Maika Monroe stars in this sequel to "It Follows." The ghost from the first movie will just not let up and has now taken the form of a rent-paying citizen in Romania so that he can keep a close watch on his precious Maika Monroe.

Obviously, I'm kidding. There are a few similarities between "It Follows" and "Watcher" but they have nothing to do with each other.

"Watcher" is about a young couple that move to Romania for the husband's job and while staying in their temporary abode, the wife played by Maika Monroe sees the shadow of a person watching her from the building next door.

This film is about paranoia, it's about fear and in many ways similar to that of Lvx Æterna is about being a woman ("watch-her"). This film coincidentally also stars Karl Glusman.

I can't go into too much without giving it away but the take away here is that this film is great. It's a wonderful example of isolation and alienation as experienced through the eyes of someone who is female presenting. The fact that it's set in Romania where most of the characters do not speak English and there are no subtitles works wonders in allowing the audience to feel a similar degree of alienation as the lead character.

Great performances all around, very subtle camerawork that makes for perfect tension building.

Definitely more of a thriller than a horror but there are some pretty scary and horrific moments.

9/10

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"The Cursed" dir. by Sean Ellis

"The Cursed" Random pick from Amazon Prime, this actually turned out to be a pretty amazing film. "The Cursed" is a gothic horror set in the late 1800s. After slaughtering and stealing land from a Roma clan, a curse is unleashed on the family and village responsible for the aforementioned atrocities. This film is another one that I'd recommend knowing as little about as possible. It's no secret that this film taps into the werewolf lore that most are familiar with, however it takes some completely new approaches and pushes some serious boundaries in terms of violence and gore. Outside of Boyd Holbrook's awful British accent there wasn't much to not like about this film. It's shot gorgeously and the pacing is somewhere between slow and medium at first but ramps up quite a bit in the last third. 8/10
Post a Comment
Read more

"Mutant" dir. by John "Bud" Cardos

"Mutant" Forget every vibe you get from the title and poster, this is a zombie movie. "Mutant" is the story of two city bois who go to a small country town to relax and party hard. Nearing the small town they are driven off the road by the local yokels and are forced to hitchhike the rest of the journey with a weird man named Mel who claims that there are aliens visiting the town. Mel is straight up lying to the two city slickers as he damn well knows that he's the root of the problem as he's been experimenting on the townsfolk by slathering them in toxic waste. The end result of Mel's sloppy experimentations is that the town turns into zombies and yep the city bois gotta stay alive long enough for the movie to end. For some reason this movie has a cult following and I'm not sure why. It's got horrible production value, the acting is along the lines of those Italian cannibal movies I just watched and the story is weak even for a zombie movie. Wha...
Post a Comment
Read more

"Samaritan" dir. by Julius Avery

"Samaritan" Where I watched it: Prime I always appreciate the idea that some people are interested in making/watching superhero movies that are not connected in some way to the Marvel or DC universe. It's kinda rare of course but it does happen... M. Night Shyamalan made his attempt with the Unbreakable trilogy as did James Gunn with Brightburn. That being said, its a difficult task when you're up against films with colossal budgets that have an already hugely established fan base. It requires very outside of the box thinking. I think that's why Brightburn succeeded and the Unbreakable trilogy felt a little too much like a knockoff. A film that tried to think outside the box by taking a test drive in the POV/found footage lane was Chronicle, which was ultimately a garbage movie but I do appreciate the attempts that were made to do their own thing (while doing the exact same things every superhero movie before it did). Samaritan falls into the category of "E f...
Post a Comment
Read more