They’re Watching is a found footage film that puts a horror spin on those ridiculous home improvement shows. I actually love found footage films, horror movies and though I have no cable, will indulge in the occasional home improvement show when given the opportunity. I also grade movies on a curve depending on its genre, and I enjoyed this flawed, but humorous and ambitious film.
They’re Watching has a Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria’s heart with a public access television budget. Though somewhat predictable, the overall trajectory of the story was clever. It is basically Dracula’s Jonathan Harker if he was part of a clueless camera crew on assignment trying to make a television show, but keep getting thwarted from maintaining their glib office on the road infighting routine because they have unwittingly wandered into a horror movie. The most absurd part of these shows is how the amateur renovators breezily take on the challenge of a nightmare shack then make it into a model home ready for a camera shoot, and a lot of the humor is predicated on that reality television premise. They are so self-absorbed that they completely miss the signals that would make any ordinary person get the hell out of there.
They’re Watching suffers from the same problems that most found footage films have. Most of the characters are unlikeable, which led me to actively root against most of the characters and worked for me. I hated the lame attempt at making a romance happen between two of the people on the crew. Greg, a man who has seen things, has an anticlimactic storyline that should have been completely cut from the proceedings, and Alex’s character should have been expanded more.
They’re Watching has a heart for visual artists, which should have been elaborated more in the story through Alex, not Greg, and the timelessness of stories as a way to root for the unpopular, the misfits, the exiled. Stories give power to their subjects by confirming their existence and providing representation. An artist’s choice of subject should not be purely about commercial gains, but telling countercultural stories. Since art can become mercenary as a tool for survival, a horror film provides a great impetus for an artist to look at something that he or she may ordinarily avoid in order to live. It is a great cherry on top of a n over the top denouement.
They’re Watching made a narrative mistake by using the how we got here trope and revealing immediately what would happen to two characters. It made me less invested in them as I watched the film and leaches any tension that exists in the film; however I do think that it helped as an attempt to throw viewers off the trail of another possible source of danger so I do not consider it a fatal error as I do in most films. I could have been having a slow day, but when the film ended, I was left with one firmly unanswered question-was that character a victim of the big bad or always the big bad? I am leaning towards the prior though the latter would explain why a character would do something so stupid without an ounce of self-preservation.
I do not think that They’re Watching intended for me to like the various villains, great and small, but I did. I am not saying that the following films even belong in the same category, but upon further reflection, I cannot help but compare and contrast this film to The Assistant. In The Assistant, a boss’ sexual misconduct and verbal abuse is a given part of the job, and he is protected by his abused underlings. In this film, Kate, the boss, honestly cracked me up. She was awful in a more relatable way because her underlings were incompetent so even if her verbal abuse is not acceptable, it hit the Gordon Ramsay delightful meter. While on assignment, her extracurricular behavior may be unwise, however it was consensual. She is not protected by her abused underlings. Indeed the allegedly relatable protagonist, Sarah, a bubbly young woman who may have gotten the job through nepotism, unquestioningly is in solidarity with her colleagues, not with her bitchy boss, who engage in a possibly illegal form of blackmail. Sarah sees nothing wrong with her colleagues’ actions, disrespects locals then endangers Kate’s life and her own by banding around an inflammatory word used in that region against independent women for centuries.
They’re Watching has a subversive heart. While its narrative seems to show allegiance to Sarah, Alex and Greg as loveable, abused, underdog grunts by spending more time focusing on them, in the end, its’ allegiance really seems to lie with its outsider women, single, beautiful and alone. When Kate discovers how her crew feels, she is depicted as genuinely hurt and perhaps dumbly surprised that they don’t like her. She discovers that men can behave badly and still be part of the team, but women who do so, even appropriately depending on the specific context, become the target of inappropriate, acceptable behavior. Sarah only recognizes behavior as bad if a woman does it, not a man. She is the cool chick because of the type of bad behavior that she cosigns. If she simultaneously condemned Kate and the guys, she would be worthy of rooting for, but the movie tells us how to feel about her. She is more disposable than she thinks.
In the end, They’re Watching signals through its actions that they hate a mob, even a mob that seeks to root out evil without starting at home and examining their own hearts. There are two mobs in this film-the Moldavian villagers and the camera crew. They may have different rationalizations for hating bad women, but they are more similar than they would ever imagine.
They’re Watching did not let a little thing like money or technical expertise get in the way of making a decent story. The CGI is dreadful, but I appreciate the commitment to the story and the vision even if it looks dreadful. There were some nice touches such as the static whenever the camera was near something supernatural that was providing interference. Static in found footage films is always significant. I have to applaud Brigid Brannagh, whom I loved in Angel, for her performance, which really stood out in a cast of basic two-dimensional performances.
If you woke me up in the middle of the night and mentioned the movie’s title, I would not remember it, but if I read They’re Watching’s summary, I would instantly recall it favorably. What it lacks in polish, it makes up for in commitment to a solid story, a heart for the castigated outcast and using the weakest elements of various genres then turning them on their heads. It was the only feature film of the directors/writers, Jay Lender and Micah Wright, who ordinarily stick to such illustrious television series as SpongeBob SquarePants and Phineas and Ferb, but I hope that they try their hands at a feature film again. They are not perfect, but they are far better than a lot of people with more resources and experience.