Watcher’s title could refer to the film’s protagonist, Julia (It Follows’ Maika Monroe), who moves to Bucharest with her husband, Francis (The Neon Demon’s Karl Glusman), despite not knowing the language. Thus, most conversations place her as an observer, an inactive participant in need of translation. However, Watcher being a horror thriller, it more likely refers to the guy across the street, who always seems to be staring into her apartment.

After she hears of nearby decapitations carried out by a serial killer called “The Spider,” Julia wonders if her fears of living in an alien country aren’t unfounded. If that neighbor might be the man she believes is following her in public. If the things that go bump in the night are perhaps not “things” at all …

For the suspense genre, an apartment building makes an ideal setting, as paranoia lives on every floor, even if its name isn’t on a single mail slot. Hell, Roman Polanski has used such a structure three times, including Rosemary’s Baby, which writer and director Chloe Okuno visually checks as Julia and Francis pass the aforementioned crime scene on their way home one night.

In just her first feature, Okuno makes all the right choices in depicting her heroine’s plights as newcomer and potential victim, with Monroe aptly pulling off both. Okuno’s conscious decision not to use subtitles during Romanian conversations puts viewers in Julia’s outsider wavelength. Equally discomforting is how Okuno shows the man throughout the first half: in a blur or with his full face blocked or out of frame, to keep tension at a gentle rolling boil. Although less patient audience members may start getting antsy, they’ll be jolted into silence by a dynamite final 10 minutes. —Rod Lott