Film Review – Watcher

Writer/director Chole Okuno made a strong impression in the anthology film, “V/H/S/94,” delivering the picture’s best segment, which combined a growing sense of mystery with disturbing discoveries, giving the endeavor a needed level of terror. For her feature-length debut, Okuno remains in the same frame of mind with “Watcher,” which also offers a slow-burn investigation of a potentially nightmarish situation. With more time to fill and paranoia to track, the helmer has some difficulty adjusting to the demands of the run time, often taking the longest route possible to fairly elementary concepts of suspense. “Watcher” isn’t a sustained nail-biter, but it does work well at times, delivering a few effective pressure points as the lead character experiences a growing sense of horror and dismissal, left alone to manage a potentially deadly position of exposure, with Okuno trying to stretch the “stranger in a strange land” atmosphere for as long as possible. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com