NIGHT WATCHER
OFFICI
AL SYNOPSIS:Following the unexpected suicide of her mother, Angela finds comfort in her new friendship with Brian. One day she receives a terrifying package containing a voyeuristic tape. The tape chronicles her mother's final days and reveals that someone had been following... watching... stalking her. As the death toll around town rises, it becomes clear that this is no mere coincidence. The deaths were thought to be suicides, but the truth is far worse.
OUR TAKE:
Night Watcher has a terrific aesthetic, full of blown-out lighting and stylized editing, and I‘d love to see what the production team could do with a bigger budget. It also has what looks to be an unusually soft and muddy transfer to DVD. However, when the reviewer opens with how the movie looks, you know what's coming next.
This one is something of a throwback to Scream and the rest of the 90's "Attractive Teens in Peril" movies. A pair of High School students meet in a support group for people losing family members to suicide. When they compare a set of mysterious videotapes of her mother and his father before their deaths, they quickly make some perilous leaps of logic and unwisely ignore involving the cops as they try and piece together the mystery of who's staging suicides.
Night Watcher would be a more engaging film if it wasn't the type of low-budget, small cast production where the instant characters appear you can label them "Killer," "Red Herring," or "Victim." Call it "I Know What You Did Last Summer Because There Only Seems To Be 7 or 8 People In This Whole Flick." The pace is a little leisurely, but the style of the film makes that quite tolerable. With limited blood, only one fairly graphic murder scene, and a little topless action, this one is a fairly light R.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
Trailers for Reborn, Summer's Moon, The Last Resort, and a cracking good one for Night Watcher itself. The disc has a set of 8 deleted/extended scenes collection with optional commentary by director Will Gordh. Presented in Widescreen in English 5.1 Dolby Digital Audio, the film also has optional English and Spanish subtitles.
CONCLUSION:
Nothing you haven't seen before, Night Watcher at least gets points for style. A fairly reserved slasher flick with a hint of flasher in it, it's a stylish throwback to the 90s spawns of Scream. A popcorn flick perfect for people who don't watch many murder mysteries, but not that memorable.
OVERALL PICTURE:
MOVIE: C+
EXTRAS: B
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