I saw it recently “Watcher” A new horror movie that pulls the nerves of Chloe Okno from the Vaudeville era movie theatre During the Cleveland International Film Festival. Even better, when I saw it in a spongy 2,800-seat theater, a bloody cry from the woman behind me echoed, as if we were in a hellish screening room.
Okuno gasped when he said this.
“That’s what you want — people scream and twist in their seats,” she said in a recent telephone interview. “What I really want to do is go to the theater, lean on a chair and take a breath from the neck to give people a 3D experience.”
The “watcher” is sneaking people on its own and doesn’t need her help. Lena Wilson, who wrote for The New York Times, called it a “tensioned, unflinching, relentlessly sharp” movie and “one of the most fascinating stories of women’s anxiety of the century.”
Filmed in Bucharest, Romania, “Watcher” (theatre) is a psychological attempt by a young woman Julia (Maika Monroe) to convince her husband Francis (Karl Glusman) to a stranger (Burn Gorman). It is a thriller. The person watching her from his apartment is also stalking her on her street. Neither Francis nor the police have been persuaded by Julia’s claim, but her neighbor, Irina (Madarina Anea), is an exotic dancer who makes friends with her and believes in her.
In one of many miserable scenes in the movie, Julia sits opposite a man in the subway and doesn’t know if the outline of his shopping bag is fruit-like or human-head-like. The truth about this creep is a guts punch when it comes.
Okuno’s feature film debut “Watcher” participates A long tradition of scary moviesfrom “Gas light” From (1944) “male” (2022), it explores what happens when a woman is unheard or unbelievable.It also pulls from “Rear window” When “It Follows” With a calculated approach to the horrors of voyeurism, stalking, and the fear of slow and deliberate pursuit of adversaries (starring Monroe) — Okuno’s uneasy revenge-the theme he explored in horror shorts. “Slut” Her rattling segment of found footage anthology “V / H / S / 94.”
Okuno, 34, who grew up in Pasadena, California, said he wasn’t allowed to watch scary movies and was in his early teens looking for horror because he “felt legally dangerous.” rice field.
“I’m sure we started with’Evil Dead’, which turned our attention to the rest of the world,” she said.
While she was in New York, she directed the episode “My Eli 200 Years Old”. Series appearing in ShowtimeI asked Mr. Okuno to select five movies that influenced “Watcher”. Below are her choices and her edited and summarized commentary.
It’s done in a big apartment and it’s a paranoid story, so there are a lot of filmmakers who have been influenced. But what worked very well was that it was a movie that was told from a peculiar point of view. You can emotionally experience everything that Mia Farrow’s characters are experiencing. That was our mission.
Visually, the composition has these wide shots of Farrows surrounded by a frame, feeling a combination of loneliness and mental claustrophobia.
This animated film from Japan is about a pop star who is about to move to acting but is stalked by her fans. The image of this woman alone in her apartment is built with fear. The man chasing her can only be seen for a moment. It gives us the horror we need and at the same time keeps him away in most of the movies.
“Watcher” was originally set in New York, but when I moved to Bucharest, I rewrote the script and the film was a big inspiration. I saw it in high school, and it told me.
I used to live abroad, but Sophia was able to accurately capture the bittersweet melancholic feeling of being alone in the city. But she also gives you a sense of loneliness and strange voyeurism.
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
This feels like the most unlikely reference. But at the narrative level, the film unleashed another aspect of “watchers.” She is very good at capturing the emotions of her hero using colors, designs and compositions to help her understand her feelings.
Also, when a woman meets a neighbor who is a sex worker and goes to the sex club where she works, they have this connection. It made me create a character that Julia could have a relationship with — it was a direct result of watching this movie.
Director: David Fincher
here, John Doe character, People who don’t meet until the end. It’s a model of a “watcher” and there are no face-to-face meetings until Act 3. It builds at that moment.
This is one of my favorite movies. Throughout my career, I’ve been chasing David Fincher and trying to do something one-eighteenth of his film.
