In the first scene, Julia’s face is seen through the back window of a car, almost obscured by reflections of Bucharest. Later, she’ll stand in front of her apartment window, flicking the light on and off as she watches her reflection appear and vanish. Free movie Watcher 2022 myflixer online in HD.
Julia is a native of New York. She doesn’t speak Romanian, but she’s trying hard to learn from tapes. She has bravely agreed to relocate there with her husband Francis (Karl Glusman), whose mother was Romanian, in order for him to accept a promotion from the marketing firm where he works. Isolated in her palatial but lonely apartment, she strikes up a solitary friendship with Irina, the only one of her neighbours who speaks English. Perhaps it is more than some have. When she leaves her curtains open at night, she believes a figure in another window across the street is watching her.
Someone appears to be following her as well. It frightens her enough that she tells her husband, and the police are called. Women have come a long way since they were stalked in thrillers in the 1960s and 1970s, but only so far. Soon after, she is confronted with those superficially soothing denials that almost every woman has heard. It’s most likely a coincidence. Why shouldn’t she keep seeing him if he lives nearby? Why does she keep looking for the most ridiculous explanation? It’s difficult to explain to someone who has never had to live with that fear that what’s reasonable for her and what’s reasonable for him are very different.
This is where the film’s power lies. It was rewritten by feminist filmmaker Chloe Okuno, who also directs, after being written by a man and following in the footsteps of a number of similar works. Julia walks down the hallway of her apartment building shortly after purchasing the figurine, and we see how tired she is: her flat feet, spaced legs, and heavy tread. It’s a minor detail, but it stands in stark contrast to how such women move in the presence of a male director. At work, there is a different kind of comprehension. Monroe looks like one of Hitchcock’s blondes in formal attire, but her face refuses to cooperate with that gilded image: she is stubbornly, inconveniently human. Every uneasy emotional expression reads
This film’s language is determined by who is watching and what we are invited to watch. Julia is constantly watching, attempting to gain control of her situation. Only once, when the pressure becomes unbearable, does she look away, focusing her gaze on a plastic bag with semi-translucent folds and curves that lend themselves to a variety of interpretations. Given the nature of the film, it isn’t really a spoiler to say that there is a killer – possibly more than one – and that Okuno alludes to Ted Bundy’s method of operation in a couple of places. What does a viewer desire? Bundy stated that the sense of possession that came from being the last thing a dying woman saw was the thing he was pursuing, the thing he valued the most. There are several interpretations of that here, as well as a final gaze that invites the viewer to occupy the possessor’s space and, conversely, to be possessed.
Watcher is a confident, stylish, and very cold example of its type. It may still have some problematic baggage, but it is a superior example of its type. Okuno depicts fear as it is experienced rather than as it is fetishized. Monroe is fantastic as usual. Bucharest’s shadows have rarely been this dark.