Maika Monroe (It Follows, MIFF 2014) stars in a stylish, slow-burn psychological thriller that uses its female gaze to raise questions about who’s watching, and why.

While her husband works long hours in his new job, Julia is alone in Bucharest, where she knows nobody and doesn’t speak the language. She fills her days by wandering the city and peering out her huge windows at the street and neighbouring apartments. Meanwhile, a serial killer nicknamed ‘the Spider’ is slaying women … and Julia begins to suspect she’s being watched. As she keeps reporting her stalker, only to be dismissed and patronised, all she can do is watch him right back.

Paying homage to classic voyeuristic thrillers by Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski and Andrzej Żuławski – and, of course, to George Cukor’s Gaslight – feminist horror director Chloe Okuno (Slut, MIFF 2015) injects female agency into the ‘vulnerable woman being stalked’ trope in her feature debut, which premiered in competition at Sundance. Monroe brings a staunch charisma to Julia, while the untranslated Romanian dialogue ingeniously underlines her isolation. Okuno never lets viewers forget that we, too, are watchers; her unsettling achievement with this film that offers a fresh take on the #MeToo message is to make us question what we think we’ve just seen.

“A taut first feature … Okuno deftly elevates Watcher from a Hitchcockian homage to one of this century’s most arresting tales of female anxiety.” – New York Times