The 2014 horror mystery “It Follows” is one of the most unsettling movie experiences of my life. What is It? And why does it Follow? These questions are never definitively answered. And in it’s truly creepy and weird wake “It Follows” leaves us with a chilling feeling of uncertainty.

Dispensing a Double Dose of MAIKA: “WATCHER” & “SIGNIFICANT OTHER” (Both 2022)

Film Reviews

by John Smistad

“Watcher” (2022)

Now join me as we jump ahead eight years to the recently released horror mystery “Watcher”. What do these two flicks have in common you ask? The fetching and fabulously gifted actress Maika Monroe is the focus of two divergent forms of following. In “Watcher” she becomes convinced that a super strange guy is staring at her out his high rise window into hers. And that, yep, you guessed it, this dude is tailing her, as well. Writer/Director Chloe Ocuno generates flashes of suspense here and there. But it’s not enough to sustain satisfaction. And the carnage-ravaged conclusion feels both abrupt and perfunctory.

Of the two, “It Follows” or “Watcher”, the clear call to watch?

Why, it only follows.

“Significant Other” (2022)

Monroe is bountifully busy summoning the scary these days. She co-stars with Jake Lacy (HBO’s “The White Lotus”) in the new sci-fi mystery drama “Significant Other”. It’s not so much that Monroe’s character of Ruth is being followed in this story as it is the notion that she may or may not be becoming someone, or something, else.

The writing and directing team of Dan Burke and Robert Olsen, together with Special Effects Coordinator Conor Wing and his crew, do a bang up job of conjuring a claustrophobic carnival of human emotion amidst the chilling warning that the end of human kind draws near. Shaken violently, it is all spilled and splattered across a Pacific Northwest wilderness playground of paranoia and pod people.

Turns out this skittish kid from the movie’s opening moments was justified in his jumpiness.

Significantly so.

“Watcher” is available to both rent and buy on amazon Prime Video and “Significant Other” is being offered through Paramount+.