The Watcher (2000) Review

The Watcher (2000)

The Watcher follows agent Joel Campbell, who, after moving to Chicago following a tragic ending to a case, is followed by the killer he never caught, kicking off a new spree in an effort to draw out Campbell. 

Caught this on streaming yesterday and looking at the cast, my first thought was “why have I never heard of this”? Well…because it sucks that’s why. Simply put, The Watcher is another early 2000s attempt to decode serial killers and attribute a Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham relationship to our cat & mouse duo that never really needs to be there. There’s such an unnecessary effort to attribute a history to Campbell and Griffin when in reality, they couldn’t be farther apart. In certainly doesn’t help either that while Keanu Reeves is in the film (due to someone forging his name on the contract), he very much doesn’t want to be here, nor does he fit the role at all, giving us more of Ted Logan than Ted Bundy. 

I’ve also never heard of director Joe Charbanic before but if I didn’t know better, I’d probably assume he got his start doing Rob Zombie music videos (not a good thing) because this has about as much style as those early 2000s anti-piracy ads. It’s just littered with bad special effects, strange slow motion shots, and  for some reason, the flashbacks get more flair than the kills, which are dull as can be. 

We get a pretty underwhelming cast too, starring Ernie Hudson, Chris Ellis, Marisa Tomei, Keanu Reeves, and James Spader. Spader, quite effortlessly, brings a cold, tortured, almost morose air about him to Campbell that actually works rather well. It’s a shame then that Reeves is severely miscast as the villain though because the film is one truly vile killer away from being something interesting. 

The Watcher, directed by Joe Charbanic, fatefully boasts a better cast than it deserves, though it never does much with the talent included, making for a pretty lackluster cat & mouse “thriller” that tries way too hard to seem cool instead of giving us anything even remotely worth our time. 

3.3/10