The Watcher Season 1 Review: Ryan Murphy’s thriller doesn’t get you watching breathlessly

STORY: An affluent couple, Nora and Dean Brannock, move into a massive, historic home in a suburban town to feel ‘safe’ after New York, but begin to face a series of terrorizing encounters. A series of letters from an unknown sender called The Watcher triggers a chain of unpleasant occurrences that threatens their family and tears apart the image of a safe haven for this town and its people.

REVIEW: Ryan Murphy and his team gave horror an addictive and campy flavor with ‘American Horror Story.’ With ‘The Watcher’ he sets up more of this mood along with co-writer and co-creator Ian Brennan (Glee, Dahmer, and Ratched). But this time around, the horror of serene suburbia, the theme of a house owner’s nightmare, is off its tone. With multiple characters and scenarios brought in with every episode, ‘The Watcher’ is not as riveting as it could have been.

The story begins with Nora (Naomi Watts) and Dean Brannock (Bobby Cannavale) moving into a new gorgeous and large home in the suburbs of New York City. They have two kids – a teenage daughter and a ten-year-old son. While the kids seemingly feel a sense of displacement with this move into a heritage home, a key point that is barely mentioned in this family drama, the couple is very excited. But the welcome here is not quite what they expected. They have a bunch of funny older neighbours – an interfering neighbour played effectively by Mia Farrow, and her brother with a developmental challenge; and an over-eager elderly couple. Dean doesn’t fit in here and doesn’t try too much either. He suddenly gets judgmental about his daughter’s outfit and make-up choices. And while you wonder why these details of the story do not add up, the Watcher appears. The Brannocks now begin to receive a series of weird, creepy letters from an unnamed stranger who calls himself ‘The Watcher’. While these letters share scarily intimate details of their lives in their new home, the local police haplessly claim they can’t do much beyond monitor the situation. As letters pile up and the difficulties in the workplace add up, Dean begins to lose control over his behaviour and also begins to unravel.

Based on the 2014 story that appeared in New York Magazine by Reeves Wiedeman, Murphy and Brennan and a team of writers have co-written this series with him. But their adaptation is primarily fictional with interruptions, unexpected visitors, and a general sense of fear created around the house. In the magazine story, the author touched upon the fact that the couple that put in everything they had to buy this extravagant historic house actually overestimated their financial capital. Here, the protagonists exhibit similar vanity but aren’t actually given room to flourish as characters. The series is entirely structured on piling up thrills and occurrences, with a touch of the supernatural included but not done full justice. Suburban fear can manifest in polite but suppressed rage. Neighbours can make life difficult too. But the frequency with which weird things happen to the family draws away from the central issue at play – those creepy letters from ‘The Watcher’ and the mind games they bring into Dean and Nora’s lives.

This horror drama features a host of stars but Jennifer Coolidge, a realtor and friend to Nora; and private detective Noma Dumezweni are the only ones that stay with you. Dumezweni in fact, is the revelation voice, throwing up hidden details about this massive, coveted house and focusing on the unsaid rule of silence in suburban towns to hide the lurid crime. The family’s sense of chaos and displacement, of not having control over the events unfolding, is effectively portrayed. But behavior change in its primary characters is not quite convincing. Why does a father suddenly start suspecting his daughter? Or why does a wife suddenly start worrying over the past mistakes of her husband? The couple’s marriage seems perfect but it only takes a few pokes to figure out the gaping holes in their relationship. Basically ‘The Watcher’ attempts a comment on those who want everything to turn out perfectly but have almost no control over the stuff that life throws up.

‘The Watcher’ is interesting but not riveting. It is for fans who love to binge-watch and Murphy loyalists.

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