This is a good one.

I came to watch “Watcher” by way of another movie. I happened across the serial killer short “Slut” on youtube and was impressed with its tense riff on the Red Riding Hood story set in what I took to be 1980s Texas. So impressed was I that I looked for other films by the director Chloe Okuno. 

(Search for “Slut Chloe Okuno” on youtube and you should find the film.)

It turned out she had made 2022’s “Watcher”, starring Maika Monroe of “Longlegs” fame, and I checked it out. It was well worth an afternoon on the couch.

The plot reminded me a bit of the Tobe Hooper remake of “The Toolbox Murders.” A young woman moves with her husband into a new apartment building, in this case in Bucharest (where hubby is from). As a fish out of water, Monroe’s Julia is further unnerved when she notices a figure in the apartment building opposite her watching her. And, to make matters worse, there is a serial killer dubbed the Spider beheading women.

Spending her days wandering the city, Julia begins to think she’s being followed. But she can’t quite get her husband or the cops to take her seriously.

(I will say this theme of a woman sensing fear and being universally disbelieved by the men in her life feels a little played out in 2025. But this film is a few years old.)

At times, the film felt like it was trying to milk suspense out of situations that weren’t really all that suspenseful. But in a way, that’s the point-is Julia’s own paranoia driving her to make mountains out of molehills?

But the last third does a brilliant job of taking the simmering suspense up to a brutal climax. I put that section up with the greats of cinema.

“Watcher” is a thriller, but avoids the often overwrought twists and turns of many modern entries into that genre. (“The killer is this guy!“ “No, wait, it’s that guy!“ “No, it’s the mother-in-law!”)

The Soviet-style concrete gray setting is often used as a nice backdrop against which yellow flowers or a red sweater are contrasted.

Highly recommended.