The shadow of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 murder mystery Rear Window looms large over Chloe Okuno’s nail-biting Sundance U.S. Dramatic Competition entry, Watcher — but this debut feature is much …
— but this debut feature is much more than homage. In fact, quite a few other suspense classics get the nod in the film’s trim 95-minute running time. Still,is very much its own creation, a sustained package that delivers on so many fronts — direction, cinematography, production design, music, performance — that what could have so easily been a formulaic slasher, genuinely pushes the boundaries of its genre, toying with an unusual bleakness that will keep audiences guessing until the end.
The premise is simple: Sometime movie actress Julia has moved to Bucharest to be with her half-American, half-Romanian husband Francis , who has a high-pressure job with an advertising agency. It is clear from the beginning that this won’t be a smooth transition. In the cab from the airport, Julia gathers nothing from Francis’ long conversation with the driver except a patronizing comment that she is “beautiful.
Soon after, Julia sees a man in the street who seems to follow her around, first into a rep cinema, where Stanley Donen’s Hitchcockian pasticheis playing, and then into the supermarket. There, ex-smoker Julia asks for a pack of cigarettes, but hands them back with a twinge of remorse. Pretty soon, though, she’ll be smoking like a chimney while her mind races into overdrive: has she seen The Spider, and is she his next victim?is obvious and never hidden.
It’s a claustrophobic setting, made all the more unnerving by Nathan Halpern’s increasingly discordant score, but Monroe brings just the right balance of vulnerability and toughness to sell it. There surely has to be some degree of self-awareness in casting the star of 2014’s supernatural chilleruses her gaze to good advantage, and it’s this that sets the film apart from more traditional fare.
Horror, in Okuno’s smart, provocative film, is ever-present on the fringes of every woman’s everyday experience, and many choose not to look. In, however, the victim confronts the male gaze and stares right back, with seriously spine-tingling results.
Canada Latest News, Canada Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Chloe Bailey Rivals Barbie in Baby Pink Miu MiuChloe Bailey wore a Miu Miu bomber jacket and matching track pants to a Lakers game. Take a closer look at her outfit here.
Read more »
‘Free Chol Soo Lee’: Film Review | Sundance 2022Julie Ha and Eugene Yi’s documentary about a Korean immigrant’s wrongful conviction doubles as a portrait of the brutality of incarceration.
Read more »
Elizabeth Banks in Phyllis Nagy’s ‘Call Jane’: Film Review | Sundance 2022‘Carol’ screenwriter Nagy directs the story of a suburban woman’s involvement in the Jane Collective, an underground service that provided safe abortions in Chicago in the years before Roe v. Wade.
Read more »
‘Master’: Film Review | Sundance 2022Regina Hall stars in Mariama Diallo’s debut feature about a trio of Black women surviving their fall semester at a prestigious, historically white college.
Read more »
Sundance Review: Elizabeth Banks And Sigourney Weaver In ‘Call Jane’A suburban housewife falls in with a group of activists in Call Jane, a Sundance Film Festival premiere directed by Phyllis Nagy, the writer of Carol. Elizabeth Banks is a likeable lead in this sto…
Read more »