Okuno's direction and Monroe's performance, together, create a simmering anxiety that never really relents.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 9, 2022

There are few genuine surprises, perhaps, but there are distinctive elements here which set the film apart, not least the way lack of fluency in a language creates a sense of siege.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 6, 2022

A very solidly engineered Hitchcockian throwback.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 2, 2022

Good movie -- solid as a rock!

| Jun 8, 2022

This is all potentially fodder for a pulp movie, but instead it was extremely well-directed, very evocative, and more like a psychological thriller.

| Jun 8, 2022

Theme never hijacks tension in Watcher, which is content to let meaning emerge organically from the familiar cat-and-mouse games of its slender genre plot.

| Jun 5, 2022

Okuno’s taut feature artfully reconstructs a Hitchcockian thriller around, yes, a blonde heroine in Monroe, but one with her own gaze and distinct anxieties.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 3, 2022

A chilly and elegant thriller.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 3, 2022

A gorgeously shot, often glacial thriller steeped in heavy-lidded style and atmosphere.

| Original Score: B | Jun 3, 2022

This beautifully crafted jewel of a throwback thriller signifies Okuno as a talent to watch, but furthermore, it pushes the viewer to question what, and who, we choose to believe and why.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 3, 2022

But while a few more corpses and a bit more on-screen danger might have made “Watcher” more intense, it would be counterproductive to luxuriate in cinematic violence in a film that’s all about why it’s wrong not to take stalking and violence seriously.

| Jun 3, 2022

Okuno crafts a superior, stylish thriller, rich with nods to the 1960s and the golden era of paranoia dramas.

| Jun 2, 2022

Okuno deftly elevates “Watcher” from a Hitchcockian homage to one of this century’s most arresting tales of female anxiety.

| Jun 2, 2022

A cut above any number of this type of film.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 2, 2022

The differences between how men and women perceive threats are always forefront in Okuno’s narrative, a (mis-)understanding gap she literalizes by relocating the American Julia to Bucharest.

| Original Score: B- | Jun 2, 2022

With minimal violence, Okuno upends creepy conventions with an engrossing, meaningful take on the woman-in-jeopardy story.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 1, 2022

Watcher is a dark, smart treasure of a film, with the collaborative energy of Okuno and Monroe very much at the heart of what makes it such a compelling viewing experience.

| Feb 2, 2022

A stunning gaslighting whodunit, [with] a blood-curdling villain for the ages.

| Feb 2, 2022

Monroe, Okuno and cinematographer Benjamin Kirk Nielsen team for a superior chiller, making excellent use of Bucharest's COVID-emptied streets to evoke the still of fright.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 27, 2022

An old-fashioned thriller with a modern heartbeat, an announcement of Okuno as a major talent to watch.

| Jan 27, 2022