Watcher: the chilling mystery ending, explained

Chloe Okuno’s Watcher is a 2022 mystery thriller movie which follows the life of Julia, a stranger in a new country and her cautious sense telling her that something’s wrong.

Settling in the new city

Julia and Francis are hopeful when they reach his native, Bucharest due to his work relocation. As they reach their apartment complex, Julia notices a silhouette of a man looking down through his window & chalks it up as random.

One day, while returning home, the couple encounters a crime scene near their apartment. There weren’t many details available. The next day, a news channel described the incident as a murder of a young woman, another in a series of crime.

The killings, Julia and the Silhouette guy

Julia gets engrossed in The Spider, the serial killer who decapitates women. Julia keeps on noticing that silhouette regularly, getting concerned. It’s from the opposite complex, a window on a floor above theirs.

One day, while out watching a movie, she feels watched from behind her seat. She bolts from the theatre and goes into a grocery store. She feels the eyes of a man on her and as she moves, he seems to move. Scared, she runs out of the backdoor.

She and Francis go to the store and look through the footage, where she clicks his picture.

Julia’s constant anxiety, confirmed

Meanwhile, Julia made a new neighbour friend, Irina. Irina tells Julia about her secret weapon in a table- a gun- to keep her ex-boyfriend away. They both laugh about it. That night, she waves her hand to the silhouette to resolve her anxiety. But, the silhouette waves back.

She calls the police but since she couldn’t connect the incidents, the police & Francis reluctantly resorts to going over that house to check. When he comes back, he confirms both the people are one- Daniel Weber.

One day, while out, she follows Daniel to a creepy basement. Turns out he is a janitor there and that is where Irina works too. She confides in her about her fears and Irina tells her to be careful. On the other hand, Francis is becoming impatient with her and rationalizing her fears.

Police at their door

Daniel Weber calls police claiming Julia had been following him and threatening him. The police chalk it up to a misunderstanding and she shakes his hand reluctantly. She accompanies Francis to a company party later where she gets hurt at a joke he made about her fears in the office.

She runs away and boards a subway home where she encounters Daniel. He explains her why he is voyeuristic- to add difference in his lonely life. She notices a plastic bag besides him- which looks like having a decapacitated head. She de-boards and walks to her apartment, beginning to pack her things.

Encounter and reveal of ‘The Spider’

While packing, she hears music from Irina’s apartment, surprising as she had been gone for the past couple of days. She finds an open door & Irina’s decapacitated bod. Soon, she is smothered with a plastic bag.

Upon consciousness, it’s revealed that Daniel is in fact ‘The Spider’ and he had hidden himself and Irina’s body in the closet when Julia came in there days ago. He warns her to be quite otherwise he’ll cut her throat.

Just then, she hears Francis calling for her in their apartment. She half-screams, and Daniel cuts the side of her neck pulling her down. Julia, with blood dripping out of her neck, tries crossing the room to fetch the gun, but gets exhausted. Daniel lays down by her side and mimics her position until she stops breathing.

That wasn’t really the end for any of them

A worried Francis tries Julia’s cell, hearing its ringtone next door. As he comes in the hallway, he sees Daniel leaving Irina’s apartment and calls him out.

But before anything else could happen, there’s gunshots from inside hitting Daniel, with a shocked Francis looking on. The camera twists towards the door with Julia in there, aiming. It looks as if she feigned her death to survive. She comes out, drenched in blood, and gives an eerie stare to Francis.

In an interview with Awards Radar, Chloe answers the most prominent aspect of viewer’s experience and the film,

“We leaned hard into this sort of question: is he watching her or is she watching him?”