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Composed and stylized with uncompromisingly elegant aesthetics, Chloe Okuno’s striking thriller, Watcher, feels like an artifact of a different era, when smart mid-budget chillers were among the most anticipated coming attractions. Although she playfully winks at them briefly, Okuno doesn’t quite go the erotic thriller route here, and instead molds something that recalls the works of Alfred Hitchcock, David Fincher, and Roman Polanski at equal measure, with audible echoes of Repulsion and Seven bouncing through the walls and hallways of its sophisticated interiors. Once again ruthlessly followed (or is she?), It Follows’s Maika Monroe plays that familiar genre woman in peril whom no one will believe. Left with no resources but her own intuition, Monroe’s Romanian expat navigates a foreign town, dismissive mansplainers, and obstructive language barriers to fend for her own life in a stunning gaslighting whodunit, against a blood-curdling villain for the ages.

Watcher will be released by IFC Midnight and Shudder. Date TBD.

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