Slipping back into a genre she knows well, Maika Monroe leads Watcher, a slow-burn thriller with a sense of paranoia seeping into every frame. Directed and co-written by Chloe Okuno, the Sundance and SXSW selection follows Monroe as Julia, who relocates to Romania after her husband (Karl Glusman) gets a new job. As a serial killer stalks the city, she starts to get the sense she’s being followed. Ahead of a June release from IFC Midnight, the first trailer has now landed.
Jake Kring-Schreifels said in his review, “Ever since It Follows, the 2014 horror movie about a spectral grim reaper stalking a teenage girl, Maika Monroe has become her generation’s avatar of fear and paranoia. Throughout her filmography, she boasts an inner world of melancholy that begins in a delicate register and then multiplies into a feverish anguish the farther her characters tumble down their own rabbit holes. It’s the kind of psychological spiraling that gives oxygen to director Chloe Okuno’s feature debut, Watcher, a chamber piece thriller and the latest gaslighting parable to champion Monroe’s specific set of skills.”
See the trailer below.
Watcher opens wide on June 3 and is available digitally on June 21.