Shudder's 2022 psychological horror film Watcher stars Maika Monroe, one of horror's most underrated scream queens. She also starred in It Follows (2014), one of the most popular indie horror films of the past decade. In Watcher, she plays Julia, an American woman who relocates to Romania with her husband Francis (Karl Glusman). Isolated and alone, Julia becomes increasingly frightened when she discovers that a man (Burn Gorman) is watching her from across the street.
Watcher unfolds into a voyeuristic nightmare. Not only is Julia isolated by her language barrier, but no one (including Francis) believes her anxiety about her stalker. Watcher is scary because it reveals a common fear: that when looking out into the darkness, someone else is looking right back. This same fear is featured in legendary filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 thriller Rear Window, where Jeff (James Stewart) discovers the grisly secret held by one of his neighbors by indulging in people-watching.
How Watcher Turns Voyeurism Into a Nightmare
Chloe Okuno's debut feature film Watcher is terrifying for many reasons. It can be discomforting to see a dark window and not know who is on the other side. Watcher is an exercise in voyeurism and observing other people. But what Julia faces is even more haunting. Not only is someone watching her, but his intentions are less than honorable. She is trapped in a physical and psychological state of horror. She knows that she is being watched and has a growing suspicion that her watcher is a serial killer targeting and dismembering women in Bucharest.
When faced with her watcher (with the aid of her incompetent husband and even more useless police), he tells her that he's watching her because she watches him. Julia's fears are twisted back onto her to paint her as an unreliable narrator. As more unsettling events occur, Julia becomes panicked and distrustful until the final moment when Julia finally gets revenge and proves that she wasn't exaggerating her fears. Watcher understands the fears that women often face: that they are not safe in their own homes and that this fear will be labeled as "hysterical." Watcher strategically uses the camera and lighting to highlight her fear and builds on her unease to tell a cautionary tale about the dangers of men not believing women.
Watcher Is a Modern Retelling of Hitchcock's Rear Window
Hitchcock's voyeuristic tale in Rear Window differs dramatically from Okuno's Watcher. The key difference is in the act of voyeurism itself. Both films feature protagonists that tend to peer out their windows only to discover a horrifying truth. But whereas in Watcher, Julia finds someone looking back at her, Jeff is a partial witness to a gruesome domestic murder. His neighbor Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) murdered his "nagging" wife for reasons guessed at by Jeff and his girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly). The two aren't the victims in the story until Thorwald discovers their voyeuristic hobby and attempts to stop them from their quest for the truth.
While there are some differences in the two films' plots, Watcher uses Rear Window's philosophy of looking into peoples' lives to uncover horrifying truths. Both films are rather feminist, but both also rely on violence toward women and the fears they face in patriarchal societies. Rear Window's central conflict relies on the death of a wife who likely didn't deserve her untimely fate, and it's only because of Lisa's bravery and intuition that Jeff makes it out of the film alive. Watcher assumes the point of view of a woman being watched who discovers the act of voyeurism being used against her. In a society where women are not always believed when it comes to violence committed against them, Watcher brings Rear Window's suspense and fear to the 21st century by exploring how voyeurism can be used to harm women.
Watcher demonstrates how the same fears manifest over time. Laid out in Rear Window is a fear of nonconsensual (yet reciprocated) voyeurism, where people see things they weren't supposed to. Watcher embodies this to tell a gripping psychological horror film that is both feminist and cautionary, with a satisfying ending and standout performance by Maika Monroe.