Chloe Okuno On Shooting 'Watcher' In Romania, Working With Maika Monroe & More [Interview]

A sophisticated and studious slow-burn that recalls the classical gaslighting thrillers of yore, Chloe Okuno’s “Watcher” yields a chilling portrayal of feminine alienation as it follows an alienated American ex-pat in Romania. We follow Julia (Maika Monroe of “It Follows”) while she settles into her elegant apartment with her husband, finds herself increasingly isolated, and struggles with an innate feeling that someone is following her. And who could blame her for trusting her own sharp intuition when her husband (Karl Glusman) is distracted and dismissive and there’s a killer on the loose in the streets of Bucharest?

READ MORE: ‘Watcher’ Review: An Alienated Maika Monroe Is Unmoored In An Isolated Tale Of Paranoia & Voyeurism [Sundance]

Below, we talked to Okuno about her piercing and uncompromisingly disciplined debut feature, her influences from David Fincher to Roman Polanski, and her attachment to the horror genre’s themes and aesthetics. 

Between “Watcher” and your 2014 short, “Slut,” you’re clearly drawn to portraying facets of the female experience within the horror genre.

I’m personally interested in [the genre] partially because a lot of the directors that I grew up loving were horror and genre directors. Also, I experience a lot of fear and anxiety in my life that has to do with being a woman. I [was recently] asked, “At what point did you realize being a woman is being in a horror movie?” There’s a lot of truth in that.

That experience is so familiar. As women, it’s almost like we need to grow a third eye at the back of our heads when we step out onto the street. You made that obscure feeling so tangible.

Hearing women [say] that they feel seen watching this movie or that they feel like they understand it on a cellular level [reminds me] why I wanted to make it in the first place. And it’s a hard thing to communicate. It’s not something that we even necessarily talk about amongst other women. [But] we know it in our bones because we live it every single day of our lives. I hope there’s something validating about seeing that portrayed in some way.

“Watcher” is a deeply cinematic film that feels both familiar with nods to the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and some classic gaslighting horror-thrillers like “Rosemary’s Baby,” and entirely fresh. I am wondering if you would consider these as influences.

Absolutely. [Roman] Polanski’s “Apartment Trilogy”—”Rosemary’s Baby,” “The Tenant,” and “Repulsion”—were a really big influence on me as a filmmaker. The way that he captures isolation within an apartment, the feeling of being increasingly paranoid because you are increasingly isolated is just very effective. So I was looking to those movies. And funnily enough, I was [also] looking at some non-genre movies. “Lost In Translation” was a big one. “Three Colors: Blue” by Krzysztof Kieślowski actually ended up being quite influential. So it was a combination of paranoid thrillers and some other films that are more generally about feelings of detachment or alienation.

And regarding that detachment and alienation, I loved your decision not to include subtitles for the side conversations that were in Romanian. That placed the audience in Julia’s shoes.

Early on, I put a note [in the script] saying that I didn’t want there to be any subtitles [to Romanian conversations]. And it was because the mission statement of this movie was to make sure that we are at all times in Julia’s point of view. We want to see what she sees and feel what she feels. If we had subtitled it, we would’ve put the audience ahead of her in a way that just wouldn’t have been appropriate.

When I recently spoke to Maika, she mentioned that she was doing her best not to pay attention to the translations on the script.

That is fascinating! She never told me, but I love that. I think that’s so great.

Part of that isolation you talk about comes out in production design too. Their apartment is beautiful, but there is something so one-note and symmetrical about it that amplifies a sense of claustrophobia.

The apartment was a set and our production designer Nora Dumitrescu did an incredible job. Initially, you want to feel like they’re entering into a place that is actually quite nice and large and they would be excited to be living in this apartment. But then as the movie goes on, we would have the space to really [isolate] Julia and make her seem small within the frame. We wanted to incorporate a lot of doorways, things where we could frame Julia within to box her in. We wanted clean geometric lines because we had this idea of symmetry. I had conversations with [both] Nora and our DP [Benjamin Kirk Nielsen] about [compositions] and the visual progression of the movie. My DP pitched the idea that we should have a lack of symmetry as we move forward, because it’ll feel like she’s unbalanced. But I felt like we should have more symmetry as we got deeper into the movie, because it almost feels like Julia’s now coming further and further into the line of sight of the watcher. And she’s so clearly within the frame, she can’t escape the gaze of the audience itself, which becomes a substitute for this person who is watching her.

You also play a lot with foreground and background. The compositions are so layered and textured.

A lot of it was trying to capture the feeling of being Julia, of being a woman, like you said earlier. This feeling of wanting to have eyes in the back of your head because you have an innate sense of things that are happening around you without [you] seeing them. You’re always alert on some level. For Julia, we wanted a shallow depth of field because we didn’t want to be able to physically see the face of Burn Gorman behind her. We wanted to obscure him as much as possible. That allowed us to have this general sea of faces out of focus behind Julia at any moment. So you never really know who’s watching her. You feel like there could be eyes on her at all times.

And Maika Monroe channels that sense so delicately, with notes of both strength and fragility.

She so incredible. I was already a big fan of hers from “It Follows” and “The Guest,” and I knew that whoever we cast, obviously it would be the person who’d pretty much be on screen for every single second. So I knew it had to be somebody who can communicate a lot even without any kind of dialogue, [someone] able to hold the screen. And I knew from her previous work that Maika would be able to do that. But I have to say: as high an opinion as I already had of her, I think she surprised me and went past my already very high expectations. She has the ability to wait for this perfect moment to release emotion. And still she’s able to adjust based on notes, which is really hard to do. She’s both perfectly in control and [can] let go of control. I’ve never really seen anything like it before. She’s extraordinary.

A perfect example to that release and control is the end shot; the “I told you so” look she gives. That whole sequence is so well choreographed, both physically and psychologically.

What’s really funny is that scene was different for the script and for most of pre-production. I changed it a week before we started shooting and introduced this idea of the gun. Before, she and the watcher [would] have a physical struggle and she gets the better of him with a piece of broken glass or something. But I wanted the suddenness and the shocking violence of a gunshot. So it was a fairly late addition to the movie. And the choreography of it was so important. But the last look that Maika gives, that was always written the script. It is a very accusatory look, which I find very satisfying.

But Maika and I had a lot of fun and did a lot of different takes of that because it’s the last look of the movie and it does have to be just that right level of accusatory. If you linger on it too long, you [would then be] gilding the lily. I think you want to make your point and then get out as soon as possible.

You have that same discipline of economy in all aspects of the movie. There is not an ounce of excess anywhere in “Watcher,” which is partly why it feels like a movie made by a veteran.

I’ll say both my editor, Michael Block, and I are quite merciless when it comes to cutting. Generally, my taste as a filmmaker is: if it isn’t 100% necessary to the story, I don’t really want it in. And that doesn’t mean that there aren’t little moments that provide color and that become necessary because they give some insight into the character or tone. [Sometimes], there’s something extra that you need to carry the movie into an interesting direction. But for a slow burn, simple and minimalistic movie like this from the perspective of one character, it felt especially important that no shot is wasted and there’s nothing extra to really distract you from Julia and her journey. I think even the producers were quite shocked when we delivered our director’s cut at how merciless I was with cutting things that didn’t feel like they absolutely needed to be in there. Because usually it’s the other way around and you’re including things that the producers want you to cut out. But that was not the case for this one.

Let’s talk about your cast further. I’m wondering if you did any sort of back-story work with Maika, Burn Gorman and Karl Glusman in establishing their chemistry and dynamics.

[The process] is a little bit different for every actor. I like to have a conversation with all of them initially about their characters, the tone, and references. With Maika and Karl, we talked a little bit about the backstory and them being relatively new in this relationship. So everything feels exciting. They haven’t maybe experienced what it’s like living with each other under more challenging circumstances. But most of the work we did was about the individual scenes and how they were relating to each other in the moment.

Burn Gorman brought a tremendous, intricate, fascinating backstory to his character that he sort of created in his mind. It informed so much of what he did. He almost has this sort of delicacy about his character [as the] watcher, there’s this bizarre tenderness [to him]. And I think he used that to create this whole story very specific to Romania in his head, which was really fascinating.

His presence and certain scenes also have a David Fincher-esque vibe. Reminded me of “Seven.”

Yes. “Seven” and the character of John Doe [played by] Kevin Spacey was the template for us. Especially in the way that we’re not really seeing much of Burn. We don’t really hear him speak until that one moment when [Burn and Maika] are face to face in the train. It’s such an amazing moment for both. They’re so incredible in that scene. And that was the scene where I was like, “I think this movie might work!”

“Watcher” hits theaters on June 3 from IFC Midnight.