Maika Monroe, the blonde star of “It Follows” (2014), has 33 credits, to date. I first became aware of her work in “Hot Summer Nights” at SXSW in 2017. Since then, I have made a point of trying to catch others among her 33 screen credits.
This is a good one to start watching this actress, if you are unaware of her work. She carries this entire film on her slim shoulders and does a great job.
Maika plays lead character Julia, who is married to Francis (Karl Glusman). The couple has recently relocated to Bucharest, Romania for Karl’s job, which makes his fluent command of the native tongue very useful in his marketing position. Julia is studying the language, but is just a beginner.
“Watcher” writer/director Chloe Okuno.
The first scene shows Maika riding in a cab to their apartment and, as the opening proceeds, Writer/Director Chloe Okuno, in collaboration with Cinematographer Benjamin Kirk Nielsen pulls the camera back to show the young couple on the couch of their living room, panning out to the street to watch the couple through the window as they get cozy on the couch.
This entire film is about watching, but the watching is by a creepy-looking guy who lives across the street from the young couple.—or is it? In the early building sections of the film, as tension is built nicely through appropriately tense pounding music (Nathan Halpern). The city, itself, often rainy and dark, is a character. When you are a non-native speaker who does not speak nor understand the language that surrounds you, you feel isolated and alone. Add to that Francis’ (Karl Glusman’s) heavy work schedule and Julia is left to her own devices for long stretches of time, including late into the night.
Coincidentally, there is a serial killer known as “the Spider” who is on the loose at the time the young couple has relocated to this forbidding old city. “The Spider” has murdered at least four women. He has decapitated at least two of them.
The part of “the watcher” from across the street, reminiscent of “Rear Window’s” plot, is well-played by actor Burn Gorman. For most of the film we are left to decide for ourselves if Julia is panicking unnecessarily or if she has a legitimate concern when she thinks “the Watcher” is following her in a supermarket or when she encounters him, perhaps by accident, on the subway. After all, he lives in the neighborhood; does that make him a bad guy or a misunderstood social isolate who lives with his elderly father?
Maika Monroe in “Watcher” at SXSW.
Another character in the film is Madalina Anea as Irina, the next-door neighbor. Irina is a pole dancer in the area, which makes you wonder about the wisdom of selecting this particular part of the city as your new neighborhood. I could relate to the “watching” out the window at all hours. When on a trip to Europe with a girlfriend, we unwisely spent one night near the train station in Frankfurt, which, as it turned out, was the Red Light district. We watched “the girls” going off to work beginning at 4 p.m. and coming back in the wee hours of the morning. We were too afraid to leave our seedy hotel to even venture out for food. When we tried to take a picture of one of the working girls on the street, she was definitely unhappy with us and gave us short shrift in guttural German. Not a good idea to be a woman, alone, in that part of the city. Julia’s entire neighborhood seems unsafe and the gloomy, rainy weather that often sets in simply adds to the vibe.
Julia’s mate, Francis, (in addition to having a name that hasn’t been popular in the U.S. for men since about 1902), can be an insensitive clod at times. He makes a tasteless joke about “the Spider” keeping his terror-struck wife company because his own work schedule is so crowded and keeping him so busy at a social gathering with his boss and their wives. Julia has learned just enough Romanian by now to understand the joke, and she is not amused. Francis tells his frightened wife, at one point, “So I should just jump to the craziest conclusion, like you?” She is not amused by his growing indifference and lack of belief in her accounts of their neighbor’s voyeuristic stalking.
Imagine if the boy who cried wolf in that well-known story was then attacked by wolves. What would happen? Would he survive? Would he simply be ignored regarding the wolves until wolves appeared and it was too late to help him?
This film from an Abu Dhabi backer, Image films, answers that question in this indie film written by director Chloe Okuno in collaboration with Zack Ford and directed by Okuno. The movie premieres in theaters on June 3, 2022. This is one film at SXSW that did not also stream. It was a good entry in the horror/thriller genre.