4/16/2023 0 Comments Slow burn movies![]() ![]() The exact qualifications of a psychological thriller are hard to nail down, so we rounded up the movies we believe are A) incredibly thrilling and B) tied to psychological anxieties. ![]() That said, one of the best parts about psychological thrillers is their ability to reveal systemic issues in our society or function as elaborate thought experiments. ![]() So, if you’re down to be stressed for anywhere between 90 minutes to three hours, this list of movies is guaranteed to give you enough anxiety and creeping thrills that you may even forget the worries of the world for a moment. If you are looking for a beautifully shot, intense, slow burn, I think you’ll like Watcher.Luckily for us, we live in the age of overstuffed streaming services. The trope of the paranoid female central character who no one believes can be a little bit tired, but it is nice to see it handled in a more realistic way. But although it is rewarding, the end does feel a bit rushed for a film that has so carefully built up its suspense. This story is not so much a “whodunit” as much as it is a “has anything been done.” We are kept in that apprehension until the very end and, luckily, the payoff is worth it. Sure it’s creepy that someone is always staring towards your window, but it’s not illegal–it’s not even necessarily indicative of malice. As a viewer, you are never quite sure if Julia’s fears are justified. This true life fear, and the self-doubt that often accompanies it, is what Watcher really gets right. You can’t quite explain it, sometimes even to yourself, but some people just feel more dangerous. But for me, Watcher captures the oppressive and uncomfortable feeling that can happen under the male gaze. I can, of course, only view this film from the perspective of a woman living in a world where the greatest threat to the safety of women is men. At one point Irina tells Julia “It’s better to live with the paranoia than to be raped or murdered with ‘I told you so’ on your lips.” which aptly sums up the female experience much of the time. Watcher captures the oppressive and uncomfortable feeling that can happen under the male gaze.Įventually, the viewer gets a bit of a surrogate in Francis and Julia’s English-speaking neighbor, Irina ( Madalina Anea), who clearly sympathizes with Julia’s fears while maybe not totally believing she has cause for alarm. As a result, Okuno masterfully builds the tension and Julia’s loneliness as she struggles to connect with anyone in her new surroundings. But as her paranoia intensifies, his understanding feels increasingly patronizing and dismissive. ![]() Francis tries, at least at first, to understand and explore Julia’s concerns. Director Chloe Okuno presents this not as an indictment of men, but simply as a worldview that men do not live with on a daily basis. But the real terror is not in the stalking itself but in the easily relatable feeling of being dismissed as overreacting when our instincts are telling us that something is very, very wrong. Watcher is, at it’s core, a stalker film. As Julia begins to notice a man watching her from the window of an apartment across the way, the couple also learns that there is a brutal serial killer on the loose. These translations are simplified and sanitized– if and when he chooses to translate at all. Set in Bucharest, we are immediately thrown into a specific kind of isolation as Julia does not speak Romanian and is forced to rely on Francis’ translations for her. The subtext, however, is where the story truly lives. Shortly after, Julia begins to suspect a new neighbor is watching and following her around the city. The premise of Watcher is simple: A young couple, Julia ( Maika Monroe) and Francis ( Karl Glusman), moves into a new apartment in a new country. ![]()
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