Chloe Okuno
Watcher
6.3A young woman moves into a new apartment with her fiancé only to be tormented by the feeling that she is being stalked by an unseen watcher in an adjacent building.
- Director: Chloe Okuno
- Main Cast: Maika Monroe, Karl Glusman, Burn Gorman
- Soundtrack: Nathan Halpern
- Cinematography: Benjamin Kirk Nielsen
- Screenplay: Chloe Okuno, Zack Ford
Cinema Premiere: June 3, 2022
15 english reviews of Watcher (2022)
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8 / 10
Okuno works up a muted style and aces the setpieces: retooling passing extras as peripheral threats as the sound design goes right through you.
- Mike McCahill -
8 / 10
This beautifully crafted jewel of a throwback thriller signifies Okuno as a talent to watch, but furthermore, it pushes the viewer to question what, and who, we choose to believe and why.
- Katie Walsh -
8 / 10
Monroe is fantastic at making Julia’s swelling paranoia both the source of empathy and distrust. She becomes the stalker, following the man she thinks is watching her.
- Anna Bogutskaya -
8 / 10
Okuno’s "Watcher" is smart, engaging and intelligent, and it’s especially refreshing to see this sort of mid-budget, grown-up genre film getting a proper theatrical release.
- Christopher Machell -
8 / 10
This classy debut feature from American director Chloe Okuno crafts a teasing, uneasy sense of uncertainty
- Wendy Ide -
7.9 / 10
"Watcher" flourishes as it complicates its premise beyond the unknowable and faceless desires of a shadowy silhouette.
- Jacob Oller -
7.9 / 10
It’s a film about a bleak and cruel universe that is unkind to victims and eager to ignore reasonable pleas, a world that has a conscious and subconscious vendetta against women in general.
- William Bibbiani -
7.8 / 10
Coldly gorgeous and never less than enthralling, "Watcher" is undoubtedly worth watching.
- Richard Whittaker -
7.5 / 10
Writer-director Chloe Okuno has a remarkably sure hand for mood-building in her feature debut, using the winding alleys and tree-lined boulevards of Bucharest to woozy, enveloping affect.
- Leah Greenblatt -
7.5 / 10
"Watcher" is a cautionary tale against those who might write off a woman's instincts as irrational or overly-sensitive.
- Therese Lacson -
7.5 / 10
Chloe Okuno has made a smart, controlled movie of pricks and gestures and tones that accumulate into a satisfying catharsis. And perhaps validated the urge to follow your gut.
- Jake Kring-Schreifels -
7 / 10
Eventually the film's subtlety gives way to a more straightforward conclusion.
- Bill Goodykoontz -
6.7 / 10
Without spoiling, this is one movie where it’d be extremely interesting to know what happens five minutes after the final scene.
- Luke Y. Thompson -
5 / 10
The result is an initially compelling mystery that becomes more predictable as it progresses, until an ending that feels both like a cheap last-minute attempt to steer the film into a more topical direction and hard to care about.
- Elena Lazic
2 foreign reviews of Watcher (2022)
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7 / 10
Translated from swedish: "Watcher" is a well-crafted thriller that truly succeeds with the idea that the murderer could be real — but also only in the mind of the main character. Together with a good cinematographer and atmospheric music, this is a thriller you will remember for a long time.
- Fredrik LagnetoftSwedish: Review: "Watcher"
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6 / 10
Translated from swedish: It's your standard thriller film that you've seen multiple times before without any surprises. The only thing that prevents me from truly hating it is, as mentioned, Maika Monroe and an entirely decent directing job by Chloe Okuno.
- Linus AndersenSwedish: cinetaste.se »
Box Office
Watcher has earned a total of 3 199 952 dollars from cinemas across the world (the global box office).
1. New York Times
One of this century’s most arresting tales of female anxiety.
- Lena Wilson
nytimes.com »