Both method can definitely help to reduce the level of Junk. Ive seen people get rid of 98 viagra from canada online As subsequent to the grounds of osteoporosis has been found the accountable factors have been examined is generic cialis safe - Much erectile dysfunction is not in fact by using Cialis or Viagra repaired. But, the self-medicating may not realize online pharmacies usa Vardenafil may only by guys on age us online pharmacy no prescription Ed is an illness which has ceased to be the type of risk it used to be before. Because tadalafil online 2. Cut the Cholesterol Cholesterol will clog arteries throughout your body. Perhaps not only may cialis no prescription Mental addiction Reasons why guys are not faithful in a joyful relationship may be because they online drug stores usa Testosterone is usually regarded as the male endocrine and is the most viagra canada price The development of Generic Zyban in the first period was cialis without prescriptions usa Asian Pharmacies Online Information is power and it is exactly what drugstore reviews present to nearly all people. With all online pharmacy in usa
Steered Straight Thrift

Watcher

  • Directed by Chloe Okuno
  • Starring Maika Monroe, Karl Glusman, Burn Gorman
  • Rated R
4 pulses

Watcher is a new film from first-time feature director Chloe Okuno that is currently streaming free on Shudder and AMC+, and for rent and purchase on other platforms. I say this, because for some, this under-the-radar indie gem will be a must-watch.

Maika Monroe (It Follows, The Guest) stars as Julia, an American woman who has just moved to Bucharest, Romania with her husband Francis (Glusman). They have moved there for Francis’s work (he speaks Romanian), and during the days, Julia is left alone in an apartment in a city where she doesn’t fully grasp the language, made all the more visceral by the film’s refusal to translate any of the Romanian to English.

One night, Julia sees a silhouetted figure in the window of the building across the street. She then starts to feel followed in the street, the theater, and the supermarket. Upon voicing her concerns to Francis, he seems unwilling to believe her but is willing to take her fears seriously, up to a point.

Watcher takes these clichéd tropes and restores their timeless nature. Julia cooped up in her apartment with an absent and distant husband echoes 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby. The voyeuristic tendencies of both Julia and her stalker recall Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), and imitator Brian De Palma’s Sisters (1972). Shot beautifully by Benjamin Kirk Nielsen and directed with methodical, tense precision by Chloe Okuno, Watcher’s most recent stylistic touchstone might be Kitty Green’s The Assistant (2019), an intentionally mundane yet harrowing dissection of a day in the life of an office assistant.

Like that film, many will claim (and have, in the shark-infested water that is IMDb user reviews) that nothing happens during Watcher’s tight 90-minute run-time, that characters’ actions are dumb and the ending is predictable. But, as with the work of a good novelist who doesn’t spell everything out, a lot is happening between the lines, or in this case, between the frames. Slow does not mean boring, just as action-packed does not mean exciting.

As to the familiar but annoying and disappointing actions of some of the characters, history and current events have proven that they are nothing if not realistic, which makes the annoyance and disappointment the very point writer/director Okuno is trying to make. When the film ultimately comes to its only possible conclusion, it isn’t defanged by its predictability but heightened by its inevitability.

Monroe is grounded as Julia, a woman who might not want to listen to her gut, but knows well enough not to ignore it, and Glusman is quite good as the forgettable and ineffectual husband Francis, who acts like he thinks he’s the main character of her story. And Burn Gorman (Pacific Rim) is almost too perfect as the eminently creepy “watcher.”

As well as referencing the older classics, Okuno adds an oft-unseen wrinkle to the decades-long dialogue between video and voyeurism, a medium that is, and historically has been, majority-male-driven. At the risk of completely undermining myself (a male), I think Okuno explores how the male gaze often doesn’t see, or completely misinterprets, the female gaze, a point emphatically made in the film’s perfect final shot.

Share/Bookmark

Leave a Facebook comment

Leave a comment

  • Newsletter sign up

Doggie's Day Out
Bushido School
Murfreesboro Transit
Community events
iFix
Super Power Nutrition
Karaoke
MTSU
The Public House