Netflix’s ‘The Watcher’ Review
Creators of Netflix’s Dahmer—Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennen, once again have another one of Netflix’s most popular recent releases, the new mystery mini-series The Watcher.
The show is based on a true story and features seven episodes. The plot surrounds a family of four who have just moved into their new dream home and are determined to find the identity of The Watcher. The Watcher is an anonymous figure surveilling the family’s home and is sending them haunting letters in the mail.
The show has made Netflix’s “Top 10 TV Shows in the U.S.” category. With its growing popularity, many are eager to give it a watch, but I advise you not to waste your time. Although the show does have great cinematography, it is outweighed by poor plot elements, making it a disappointing watch experience.
With it being a mystery, one would expect an exciting tale that keeps them on the edge of their seat, desperately waiting for it to be solved. However, The Watcher desperately fails at this.
Now, the case that the show is based on is unsolved, but the journey the show takes you on to get to the end is not worth watching. In the duration of the show, you are led down several different paths to try and answer the question, who is The Watcher? It seems wasteful because when a path comes to a dead end, it does not take you a step back or two, but all the way back to square one. So, the plot is just constantly pushing viewers backwards and forwards and it feels like the story is just getting nowhere. Not to mention, each suspect is proposed poorly by giving them a B.S. motive that you can’t make sense of being true.
This happens until the ending where we never find out who The Watcher is and are left with so many unanswered questions. For example, the family’s neighbor, Maureen aka Big Mo, is suspected of being The Watcher with the motive of wanting to sacrifice the Brannock children so she can feed on their blood. This is suggested in the second episode and there is no additional information provided after the fact. The Preservation Society became a more integral component of the mystery as the episodes continued, yet the connection between them and The Watcher’s identity was never made clear either. As confused as the show’s family was about what was happening to them is exactly how viewers are left.
All in all, despite having a good concept, The Watcher’s lack of clarity ruins its potential to be anything worth watching.
