JP Nunez
Stalkers just might be the scariest monsters in all of horror cinema. The idea of someone being so obsessed with you that they start to intrude on your personal life is pretty terrifying, so it’s no surprise that filmmakers keep going back to this well. Films like Someone’s Watching Me!, The Invisible Man (the remake), and Black Christmas (the original) have shown us just how horrifying this kind of obsession can be, and when I heard about Who’s Watching, I thought it had the potential to join that list. This movie sounded like a great new addition to the stalker horror canon, so I couldn’t wait to check it out.
Who’s Watching was written and directed by Tim Kasher, and it stars Zachary Ray Sherman, Gracie Gillam, and Olivia Luccardi. In the film, Caleb is pretty much a loner. His social life seems to consist entirely of his three-piece metal band, and as far as we can tell, he doesn’t really hang out with his bandmates outside of official band activities.
But one day, that all changes…or so he thinks. When an attractive woman named Krista is transferred to his office, he instantly becomes obsessed with this new coworker. He starts by making inappropriate comments to her at the office, and when she rebuffs him, his antics quickly escalate and become criminal.
With a plot synopsis like that, it’s no surprise that the first half of Who’s Watching stands or falls largely on the strength of its lead character. Sure, everybody else has to be good as well (and they are), but the weight of this story rests firmly on Caleb’s shoulders. So if you don’t buy into him, the movie won’t work.
It’s a lot of pressure to put on a single character, but thankfully, he’s brought to life quite convincingly. He’s played by Zachary Ray Sherman, and the man pretty much transforms into Caleb. For starters, he just looks like a creepy incel. The hair and wardrobe departments did such a good job I had to Google this actor to see what he’s like in real life, and I was shocked when I found a seemingly normal, well-adjusted guy.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Both Tim Kasher’s script and Zachary Ray Sherman’s performance magnify that effect exponentially, and there were a number of times when Caleb’s inappropriateness made me genuinely uncomfortable. Imagine taking Michael Scott from The Office and sapping the character of all his humor while leaving his cringiness intact, and that’s basically this guy. He’s the consummate creeper, so he almost single-handedly carries the first half of Who’s Watching.
Unfortunately though, as great as this character is, he’s not quite strong enough to make the film work. He needs a good story to help bear some of the load, but this narrative is about as one-note as you can get. It’s all about Caleb’s increasingly unhinged behavior–including stalking Krista outside the workplace, breaking into her home and setting up secret cameras around the place, and being a total perv towards other women as well–and that stuff gets stale after a while.
It quickly starts to feel like you’re simply watching the same basic idea play out over and over again in different ways, so I found myself desperately hoping for an intriguing plot twist that would break the monotony. And to the movie’s credit, it tries to do just that. In fact, there are two scenes where it looks like Who’s Watching is finally going to change gears and give us something new, and when I reached each one, I began to get my hopes up.
However, those hopes were quickly shattered. I can’t tell you exactly why without venturing into spoiler territory, but I can say that each “twist” simply ends up giving us more of the same. They both embody the old maxim “The more things change, the more things stay the same,” and the second one is especially disappointing.
It’s a significant narrative shift that turns this entire film on its head, but somehow, it still manages to be the “same old, same old.” Instead of giving us anything new, it just kicks off a tedious retread of moments we’ve already seen, and it makes the final 20 minutes or so even more of a chore to watch than the rest of the movie.
It’s the cherry on top of this frustrating experience, so if you get the chance to see Who’s Watching sometime in the future, I recommend giving it a pass. While the lead character is good, his story is incredibly shallow, both narratively and thematically. It’s little more than a series of increasingly obsessive actions, and the message of the film is basically just “Don’t be creepy.” Granted, that’s not a bad message, but for my money, it’s too simple and too common sense to be all that interesting.
Who’s Watching played at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival on October 19.
