Fleapit revisited:Watcher.

There's not a single country on the entire continent of Europe in which you are more likely to be murdered than the United States (you're six times more likely to be murdered in the USA than you are in the UK, France, Germany and twelve times more likely to be murdered in America than in Spain or Italy) yet when Americans in Hollywood films visit Europe they do so for only two reasons.

To fall in love (Four Weddings In A Funeral, Notting Hill) or to come into mortal danger. The Taken series of films were, perhaps, the most obvious signifiers of this trend in movie making but into the field, in 2022, came Chloe Okuno's Watcher. I watched Watcher last night on Netflix and though it was eminently watchable it was hardly a classic. I doubt I'd watch Watcher again.

American Julie (Maika Monroe) and her partner Francis (Karl Glusman) move into a plush (on the inside, at least) Bucharest apartment. He's had a promotion at work and as his mum is Romanian he can speak the language. She can't. Which she means she spends most of the day at home on her own. But instead of watching tv, reading books, or masturbating she seems to spend most of the time staring out of the window.

But .... somebody is always staring back at her from the flat across the road. She makes the foolish mistake of waving at him, he waves back, and soon he's showing up everywhere she goes. In the cinema for a Cary Grant matinee, on the metro, in the supermarket, and, yes - you've guessed it, in her dreams. That ghost train's never late.

She relates her concerns to Francis and though he doesn't dismiss them entirely he thinks she's reading too much into it. Nevertheless, he knocks round at the creepy neighbour's and even gets a policeman (Florian Ghimpu) involved. The cop brings the neighbour, Daniel Weber (Burn Gorman), round to Julie and Francis's apartment and they all agree, somewhat begrudgingly, that it's been a terrible mistake.

But Julie, and us - the audience - know it's not. When a serial killer named The Spider (who has been cutting throats and decapitating women in the Romanian capital) is finally apprehended it seems like Julie's fears may be lain to rest and Daniel will be able to get on with his slightly disturbing hobby of harmlessly staring out the window and following attractive young women around. Oh, and mopping up presumably sticky messes from the floor of the strip club in which he works as a cleaner.

But when Julie's new friend, neighbour, and stripper Irina (Madalina Anea) goes missing, it starts to look like The Spider may still be at large. When Julie finally learns enough Romanian to understand that inattentive Francis and his friends are making light of her fears she heads off into the dark Bucharest night in what seems highly likely to be a very poorly judged flit.

While Watcher plays on genuine, if very extreme, female anxieties and provides some bona fide jumpy moments, I found that none of the characters were fleshed out well enough to make me care about them (Glusman's Francis was little more than a cipher) and the plot was so rudimentary that I found myself imagining twists and turns in the storyline that simply didn't appear. I wanted to be wrong-footed but the only twist, for me, was that there wasn't one. Let's send some Romanians to St Louis next time and really shit them up.

Thanks to Michelle for watching this with me and having a cushion ready for me to hide behind if it all got too frightening.