Watcher (2022) Movie Explained: Ending & Themes Analyzed
Watcher (2022) Film-explained: End and analyzed themes: It is difficult to fully understand from a male point of view the pervasive feeling that every woman experiences. The paranoia and the fear of being monitored. The isolation and loneliness feels all-consuming when one is faced with being in an unknown country, unable to understand the language or completely lost in the environment. Consequently, the protagonist who gets this paranoia confirmed is all the more disturbing and frightening.
Watcher (2022) Plot summary and synopsis:
Julia (Maika Monroe) moves to Bucharest with her husband Francis (Karl Glusman), who has been assigned a marketing position. Francis’ knowledge of the language stems from his mother’s fluent language, while Julia’s unfamiliarity with the language gives rise to a sense of existential ennui in her, exacerbated by her failed career as an actress. They are moving into an apartment building that has a large panoramic window. That night, unable to sleep, she looks out the window as the rain pours down and realizes that a man is watching her from the building across the street. To free herself from her passion while her husband works long hours, Julia tries to learn the language while getting to know the city. But when she explores the city, the hackles on her back are always raised because she is overtaken by the unsettling feeling of always being followed.
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There are also a few incidents that make Julia uneasy. The first is the murder of a woman in one of the building complexes adjacent to theirs. Julia and Francis returned one night after a walk when they came across a crowd huddled in front of an ambulance that housed a guy who looked at the crowd in amazement. Julia later learns from the news that the woman was murdered, and hthe fear is heightened when, during a dinner conversation with Francis’ colleagues, she finds out that the woman had her head beheaded, and this is related to “other attacks”. Julia’s superficial research on the internet the next day gives her information about “The Spider”, a serial killer who has beheaded younger women. An interview with one of the women who had been attacked two days ago reveals that the killer had entered her house at night, pressed a pillow over her face and put a knife over her throat. But he had stopped reviewing the deed and had sat next to her and watched. She felt like he had been sitting for hours.
Julia’s fear of being followed returns as she walks through the city one day, and she walks into a movie theater (which plays Stanley Donen’s 1963 film Charade) in an attempt to evade him. As she sits in the theater and sits down to watch the movie, she realizes that the man has been sitting right behind her. In obvious panic, she leaves the theater and enters the nearest supermarket. When she realized that the man had not given up, she manages to give him the tie and hide behind the service door and try to get a glimpse of the man’s face. When she is spotted by one of the workers in the supermarket, she apologizes and walks out the back door. That night, Francis comes home to find Julia amazed at the experience. To reassure her, they go to the supermarket to review the security footage. She manages to identify the man via the security footage and takes a picture of him, though Francis has a hard time believing Julia’s allegations of being persecuted by the man.
Julia feels comfort and a sense of kinship with her neighbor, Irina. One night while drinking drinks, Irina is interrupted by her ex-boyfriend, Cristian, who knocks on the door. Irina stands firm and makes him go. She also shows Julia the drawer where she keeps her gun (a gift from Cristian) for protection. Later that evening, when Julia returns home, she looks out the window and sees the man see her again. Suspiciously she waves to him and to her horror he waves back. When Francis returns, Julia informs him of the incident and decides to call the police. Both Francis and the policeman look at her questioningly, while she is convinced that the man keeping an eye on her is the same man who had followed her. She even showed the picture she had taken from the CCTV recordings. The policeman, accompanied by Francis, goes to the adjoining building to talk to the man. They find out that the man’s name is Daniel Webber (played by Burn Gorman), but Francis is still not convinced by her fears and thinks she’s unnecessarily paranoid.
A few days later, Julia follows Daniel through the city and eventually follows him to a strip club called The Museum. There she is greeted by Irina, who she learns works there. She also learns that Daniel is a sweeper working at the strip club, but Irina is unable to remember him as she faces men who have the same stupid expression all day, so all these faces get blurred after a while time. Later in the evening, Julia hears a commotion in Irina’s apartment. The walls between their apartments are thin enough that she could clearly hear glass shattering and a cry for help from Irina. When she knocks on her door repeatedly, Julia receives no response and she eventually persuades her neighbors to help her open the door. When it finally succeeds, she sees the empty apartment and one of her neighbor’s cats sitting on top of the dressing table, believed to be the one who knocked over the lamp, thus creating the tumult Julia had heard. Francis becomes impatient with Julia and believes that her fears are unfounded. He also informs her that the serial killer “The Spider” has finally been apprehended.
The next day, Julia is greeted by Cristian, Irina’s ex-boyfriend. Julia informs him that Irina never returned home, which worries him because they were to meet after Irina left for work. She asks Cristian to accompany her to the adjoining building and help her confront Daniel. Cristian knocks on the door of his apartment, but no one answers. After Cristian is gone, Julia finally works hard to knock on the door herself, but it is answered by an unknown older man. Later that evening, when Francis has returned home, Julia is visited by a police officer accompanied by Daniel, who had accused Julia of persecuting him. After giving explanations, Julia and Daniel reluctantly shake hands while the officer chalks up this incident as a misunderstanding.
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After accompanying Francis to a company party, Julia manages to use her limited knowledge of the Romanian language to learn that she and her fears are objects of ridicule that Francis uses to acclimatize to his colleagues. Discouraged, angry and finally resigned to the gas lighting she has experienced the last few weeks, she leaves the party and board the subway. The car was almost empty, but she noticed that Daniel was sitting further away. He turns to her and tries to explain away his voyeurism as a result of the paralyzing loneliness he feels because of the most monotonous life with the care of his sick father. She would have believed him, but she notices his shopping bag and what appears to be the outline of a severed head. When she gets off the train, she quickly goes to her apartment and starts packing her suitcases with the intention of quickly leaving this city. However, she hears the sound of music playing in Irina’s apartment.
Watcher (2022) End explained:
Curiosity prevails and she decides to investigate the matter. She enters the apartment and finds Irina’s headless corpse leaning against a chair. Before she could scream, Daniel uses the plastic bag he has been carrying to strangle her and knock her unconscious. When she arrives, she finds Daniel’s silhouette looking over her. Daniel tells how he killed Irina, and secretly revealed himself as “The Spider”, and also reveals that he and Irina had been hiding in the closet when Julia came in with the hostess a few days ago. When Julia hears Francis trying to get into their apartment, she makes an effort to scream, but Daniel quickly uses the knife to cut her throat. The blood runs from her throat and tries to crawl to the coffee table, where Irina holds her gun but stops. Daniel leans down and looks at her as she loses consciousness.
When Francis enters her apartment and cannot find Julia, Francis calls her on her cell phone. When he hears the ringtone from Irina’s apartment, he goes out into the corridor and sees Daniel leaving the apartment. The two lock their eyes, but before Francis can do anything, Daniel is shot several times from behind. Twists and falls to the ground, the last thing Daniel sees is a bloody Julia, who has managed to locate the gun and kill him. As Francis goes into shock against the bloody scene, Julia in her bloody attire stares at him stone-safe and almost says “I told you so” before the film cuts into black.
Watcher (2022) Critical analysis and themes explained:
Structured as a slow burn, the film attempts to capture the mind of Julia (played by an excellent Maika Monroe) as she is plagued by fear and paranoia over someone persecuting her. The film also attempts to explore the gas lighting that her boyfriend faces as well as the people around her. It is further enhanced by the feeling of isolation that arises due to living in a foreign country and being unfamiliar with both the language and the culture. The only source of connection Maika manages to create, her neighbor Irina, is also killed, exacerbating her loneliness and fear. That’s why the ending, which serves as a great case of undermining the tropics, is also a way for Maika to regain her courage and free herself from the existential ennui that had plagued her since the beginning of the film.
Watcher (2022) also shows the two types of glances that plague Julia. The first is the aggressive and even relaxed gaze of the people of the city, who look at her with a sense of curiosity, while connecting her with superficial qualities and with her fear and not making an effort to go deeper than necessary. The second glance (the only example of an affirmative one) is what she shares with Irina, two women who bond over loneliness and the promise to take care of each other. A promise of female solidarity that is cruelly torn from her, which she later manages to avenge in the finale. I just wish the film had a better tempo and the script a little tighter. It’s still an interesting, albeit slightly tropical, Hitchcockian thriller and an interesting debut feature by Chloe Okuno.