“Sustains a strong ambiance of dread ” The Hollywood Reporter
“A fun, shivery, fish-out-of-water chiller” Variety
“[A] tense thriller about female vulnerability” Screen Daily
“This is a thrilling watch” Film Threat
“A chilling psycho thriller” The Film Stage

Mediumrare Entertainment announces the award-winning thriller WATCHER is being released on DVD and Blu-ray on 6 February 2023.

The debut film from Chloe Okuno is a sleek, remarkably assured thriller that puts a thoroughly modern spin on Hitchcock’s classic Rear Window. Featuring a superb cast including Maika Monroe (It Follows), Karl Glusman (The Neon Demon) and Burn Gorman (The Dark Knight Rises), WATCHER was nominated for awards at Sundance and SXSW festivals, and won Best Feature at this year’s Boston Underground Film Festival.

The film features a really outstanding central performance from Monroe (who shot to fame in the horror phenomenon It Follows in 2014), as a young woman who begins to think something is amiss when she spots a lone figure staring at from the window of a neighbouring flat. Recalling Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, Monroe is note-perfect as a woman in alien surroundings, plagued with lurking anxiety, who can’t convince anyone, not even her husband, that there is something wrong. Is she imaging things, or are her ever-mounting fears warranted?

With the forbidding Bucharest locations recalling the cold Venice of Don’t Look Now, a sense of unease from the outset, a wonderfully atmospheric score by the brilliant Nathan Halpern (Emily The Criminal), and the tension escalated almost unbearably in the creepy and brutal climactic scenes, WATCHER is a sleek, superb thrill ride of a film. If you enjoyed the recent, similarly themed Barbarian (about a young woman who has trouble getting anyone to believe her that something is awry) then you’ll want to watch WATCHER.

Julia joins her husband when he relocates to his family’s native Romania for a new job. Having recently abandoned her acting career, she finds herself frequently alone and unoccupied. One night,people-watching from her picture window, she spots a vague figure in an adjacent building, who seems to be looking back at her. Soon after, while alone at a local movie theatre, Julia’s sense of being watched intensifies, and she becomes certain she’s being followed—could it be the same unknown neighbour? Meanwhile, a serial killer known as The Spider stalks the city.

Extras include:
Audio Commentary by Director Chloe Okuno and Editor Michael Block - this feature-length track has director Okuno in discussion with her editor about making Watcher.