The Watcher Review: A Nightmare From The Neighborhood In Netflix True Story Series

Cast: Naomi Watts, Bobby Cannavale, Mia Farrow, Margo Martindale, Richard Kind, Joe Mantello, Jennifer Coolidge

Created By: Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan

Streaming Platform: Netflix

Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

After the arrival and the enormous success of Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, Ryan Murphy returns once again to Netflix with The Watcher. Also, in this case, it is a true story, perhaps less known than the previous ones but in its way just as disturbing. At the center of this story is a family that, having moved to a new house, is persecuted by a stalker, someone who has been observing the mansion – according to him – for several decades. As we will see in this review of The Watcher, the Murphy series captures its intriguing premise (we were able to preview the first episode, out of a total of seven) and a truly first-rate cast, from Naomi Watts and Bobby.

Cannavale – in the role of the protagonists – to the supporting actors, including the disturbing neighbors in which the characters of Mia Farrow and Margo Martindale stand out. Seven episodes to tell an incredible true story that happened in 2014 to a middle-class family from New Jersey; convinced that she has bought the house of their dreams, she will soon find herself inside an intricate web of stalking and mysterious threatening letters. In our review of The Watcher, we will analyze how much the Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan miniseries shatters the all-American myth of the “house auction race” through a creepy tale that we are sure will never let you see your neighbors again with the same eyes…

The Watcher Review: The Story

The Watcher is a series inspired by an absurd true story first told in 2018 by journalist Reeves Wiedeman on The New Yorker; in November of that year, the traumatic experience of the Broaddus family, who moved to their new home at 657 Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey, is detailed. Sometime after the move, Maria and Derek Broaddus begin to receive not only disturbing threats and attitudes from neighbors but also intimidating letters from an anonymous “observer”, who seems to know everything about them, from their shifts to their activities within the home, even their habits. It will be the beginning of a nightmare.

Murphy and Brennan’s new audiovisual product centers its narrative focus exactly on the wealthy family who moves to Westfield, without sparing the viewer anything about the terrifying modus operandi of the mysterious stalker who for a long time has taken away sleep and mental balance. by Maria and Derek Broaddus. The Watcher works great when it turns into an unprecedented example of a home invasion that has much more in common with Murphy’s American Horror Story than with his other recent projects.

But all that glitters is not gold, and the first signs of something wrong are evident from the first days of their move: the neighbors seem to have targeted them, annoyed by their presence (one of them even repeatedly sneaks into their home without permission), but mostly strange letters begin to arrive. Someone who calls himself The Watcher, the observer, explains to him how his job is to keep an eye on the house and its inhabitants, and how he takes pleasure in observing them, implying that his intentions towards them are decidedly sinister. The police don’t seem to be able to help them, and stranger things start happening in the house. Has the dream life that the Brannocks thought they built for themselves already turned into a nightmare?

The Watcher Review and Analysis

If The Watcher is at its best when it tells the nightmare of the Broaddus family, turning the series into an unsuspected experiment that winks at certain voyeuristic thrillers, it is not as effective when asked to put his foot on the accelerator. of narrative tension. The writing of the miniseries appears, despite the stimulating and chilling source material, ordinary and without flickers, in search of an idea of ​​seriality far from the perfection and surgical rigor of Dahmer, the latter always on Netflix and always under the Murphy banner/Brennan. Which is a shame, because the cast is varied and very generous (the legendary Mia Farrow returns to the screen after eleven years after her last feature film in a shivering “weird neighbor” role) and the miniseries still manages to give a new and sinister meaning to the biblical phrase “love your neighbor”. But all this is not enough to make The Watcher an unforgettable product.

Of course, the hallucinating true story of the Broaddus family catalyzes the two showrunners to give shape to a warning that harshly criticizes the all-American rush to auctions to buy new homes, only to turn into a serial product that temporarily puts aside the chilling details of the true story to relate to another serial project by Ryan Murphy, of which he shares multiple points of contact: we are talking about American Horror Story. The hugely popular anthological series can be compared to The Watcher for how the latter transfigures typical elements from home invasion to real clichés referable to the theme of the haunted house.

Here, however, there are no longer the ghosts of Murder House or Hotel to take the sleep of the new tenants of the Westfield house, but not recommendable observers who will make you question everything you thought up to now of your (good?) neighborhood. At least in this, the miniseries manages very well to disturb us. As we anticipated at the beginning, the plot of The Watcher immediately becomes particularly intriguing, the script is well constructed and the viewer is quickly dragged into the misadventures of the Brannocks. Compared to Dahmer – Monster, of which Murphy was only the producer and creator (together, as in this case, Ian Brennan), here we notice a little more of one of the author’s trademarks, namely the interest in the grotesque and the bizarre.

The dryness and rigor of the Jeffrey Dahmer series here are replaced by an artificial and unnatural aftertaste, which perhaps clashes with the “true story” premises that accompany the series. That said, however, the series – as far as we could see from the first episode – starts from a solid and well-structured script, and is capable of building a tense and distressing atmosphere, which tempts the viewer to binge-watching.

Among the merits of the series the excellent cast undoubtedly stands out, both as regards the main characters as the supporting actors. Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale, in addition to bringing excellent chemistry on stage, manage to give depth to two characters who immediately show different shades. Both of them strongly desire to create a different life for themselves, represented by the goal of the new home – which makes them seem in the eyes of others far more affluent than they are -, leaving behind the mistakes of the past and building an idyllic family picture, in which however even the love for children is at times obscured by the need for control and to “appear”.

The cast of supporting actors, one more disturbing (and darkly fascinating) than the other, from the local history enthusiast – with a Wednesday Addams look – by Mia Farrow, to the two neighbors watching the newcomers from their deckchairs, are particularly apt. by a ferocious Margo Martindale and Richard Kind. But who is hiding behind the self-proclaimed “observer”? Who is behind the mysterious mechanical voice that – off-screen – reads the disturbing missives? Our advice is not to research the story that inspired the series, letting yourself be carried away by a mystery that we foresee will become more and more distressing. Murphy takes advantage of some of the stylistic features of horror cinema (which we know well) to make the show even more disturbing and engaging. In short, the perfect product for this time of year.

The Watcher Review: The Last Words

The miniseries created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan and inspired by a chilling true story do not repeat the splendor and rigor of Dahmer, choosing the path of ordinary staging without narrative tension. The Watcher, however, deserves the price of viewing on Netflix thanks to a close-knit cast on which Naomi Watts and an unprecedented Mia Farrow stand out. Perhaps a little excessive is the taste for the grotesque that the authors instill in the work, which not all spectators who love crime might like. However, the cast choices are excellent, first, Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale are in the role of the protagonists.