‘Watcher’ ending explained: Who is the Spider?

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Watcher.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re wrong.

You may feel similarly tense while viewing Watcher, a nifty thriller from director Chloe Okuno that was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Though it had a modest theatrical run — pulling in a little over $3 million — it’s gaining fresh traction after climbing up the Netflix charts this month. (Try not to confuse it with the Netflix series of the same name.)

That popularity surge is a good thing. Watcher, shot on location in Bucharest, Romania, cultivates an appropriately chilly atmosphere, with stark compositions, evocative uses of color, and disquieting themes about eyes that could be tracking you at any moment.

The Watcher cast includes scream queen Maika Monroe (It Follows, Longlegs), as well as Karl Glusman and Burn Gorman. Their three characters converge in a finale that prompted questions about the film’s straightforwardness and central themes.

Read on as we unpack Watcher’s ending and what it says about paranoia and gender dynamics.

What is Watcher about?

Watcher is about a former actress, Julia (Monroe), who moves to Bucharest when her husband, Francis (Glusman), gets transferred there for his job. Though it’s beautiful in Romania, Julia nevertheless feels alienated. She doesn’t speak the language, and is often alone as Francis works.

Soon, she notices that a man in the apartment across from theirs appears to be staring at her. Furthermore, she begins to feel as if she’s being followed. This is unnerving, especially after reports begin circulating of a serial killer targeting women her age. They call him the Spider, and rumors swirl that he sometimes decapitates the women he kills.

Julia’s sense of fear slowly grows throughout the film, especially after the disappearance of her only friend, Irina (Mădălina Anea), who lives next door.

Is the watcher across the way responsible? Or is Julia, as the men in her life keep telling her, just being paranoid?

What happens at the end of Watcher?

Though Julia believes the watcher is stalking her, the watcher himself soon accuses her of the same thing. His name is actually Daniel (Gorman), and he shows up to her house with a police officer after she knocks on his door and discovers an elderly man in her apartment. The incident is chalked up to a misunderstanding.

But Julia is still unnerved when she sees Daniel in a near-empty train car on her way home one night. He explains that he cares for his ailing father and that his “sad hobby” is to sit at his window and look out at the people going about their day.

“I did not understand what I had done that was so bad, and why you kept following me,” he tells her. “I wondered if you were trying to embarrass me. Or if you were trying to scare me.”

He demands an apology. Julia gives him one, but she’s also growing uncomfortable with the bag he’s carrying. (The object inside looks to be shaped like a human head.)

Back at her apartment, she hears music from Irina’s place next door. Thinking her friend may have returned, she goes next door only to discover Irina’s headless body. Daniel then appears and suffocates Julia with a plastic bag.

Daniel reveals that he was hiding in the apartment with Irina when Julia and the landlady searched the place. After hearing Francis call Julia’s name next door, Daniel cuts her throat. Julia fruitlessly attempts to crawl to safety, but he lays down next to her, watching her until she appears to have died.

In the hallway, he sees Francis. Before Francis can do anything, a gunshot rings out. Daniel is shot multiple times by Julia, who faked her death.

The film ends with a bloody Julia staring at her husband, her look loaded with resentment for him having not believed her.

Who is the watcher in Watcher?

The simple answer is that Daniel, who also turns out to be the Spider, is the watcher.

But, like Brian De Palma did in films like Home Movies (1979) and Body Double (1986), Okuno shows how everyone can serve as both the watched and the watcher. As the film progresses, Julia ends up watching her watcher as much as he watches her (say that three times fast).

Even Daniel finds that he’s being watched by a stranger after his assault on Julia.

What does the ending of Watcher mean?

According to Okuno and Monroe, Watcher is meant to be a story about the importance of believing women when they think they are in danger.

Speaking with the LA Times following the film’s release, Okuno said, “A lot of my work writing on the script was about pulling in from my own experience about what it’s like to be a woman in the world, what it’s like to be confronted with people who are doubting you and just knowing that as women, unfortunately, we already know that we’re going to be doubted.”

She continued, “We already have to sort of police our own emotions and approach things very delicately, and that in and of itself can be very frustrating. So I feel like that’s the journey that you see Julia on in this movie… [In Maika’s performance] I saw her self-regulating and I saw the sort of quiet frustration in having to do that constantly.”

Monroe concurred. “Even within relationships that I’ve had, that a person that I consider to be maybe one of the closest people in my life, when that person doesn’t have my back or doesn’t believe me, I think it’s the most lonely that I have ever felt,” she said. “And that’s something that Julia experiences — this person that is supposed to be there for her isn’t. That’s heartbreaking to me.”

The movie also arguably explores how paranoia can turn someone who believes they’re in danger into the aggressor by casting suspicion on an innocent person. (That version, to be honest, better suits the title by more directly interrogating who, exactly, is “the watcher” in this scenario.) And some have criticized Watcher for being so straightforward.

Okuno addressed this. “There were times when I think we discussed, is there an alternate ending to this? Is it too straightforward?” she said. “But for me, I think the whole point of the movie is that the whole time she’s like, ‘Hey, it’s this guy,’ and nobody believes her. And then at the end, it’s the guy. The twist is sort of that there is no twist.”

This is why the film ends not with Daniel’s death, but with the withering look Julia offers to Francis, who consistently insisted that she’s overreacting.

“[Francis] just fundamentally doesn’t understand what it’s like to be a woman and to have an experience of being followed and to have that experience supported by a lifetime’s worth of little moments that add up to just generally feeling unsafe or always having to look around and always being aware, always having this omnipresent gaze on the back of your head,” said Okuno. “Ultimately of course he’s dismissive. Nobody’s rooting for Francis, but I do think in my mind it was more of the tragedy of a lack of basic understanding because he’s not capable of it.”

Where can I watch Watcher?

If you want to watch Watcher, stop creepily staring into your neighbor’s windows and fire up either Netflix or AMC+, where it’s currently streaming. You can also rent or buy it via Amazon Prime.

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