The Watcher: Critic Reviews

Multiple candles may be a universal symbol in movies (and rock videos) for romance and spirituality. But they're useless in illuminating the deadness of The Watcher.

[Keanu's] line readings, aiming for a mixture of suavity and creepiness, just sound silly.

To borrow a phrase from another Chicagoan, John Belushi, The Watcher is a 'but nooooo' movie.

The Watcher is a numbingly familiar exercise in fear, disgorging regular doses of grisly violence buoyed by precious little plot and pitifully thin character development.

A minor, but watchable, melodrama.

Reeves, as the killer, has the fairly thankless task of saying only what the movie needs him to say; he's limited by the fact that his killer has no real dimension or personality apart from his function as a plot device.

It's a mystery why anybody -- the director, the cast -- would want to devote a significant chunk of their lives to this murky tale.

A crass, mechanical attempt at a thriller that should have gone straight to video.

Has 'direct to video' stamped all over it.

The thinking is, if faced with a dead sequence in the editing room, flood it with light, or break it up with jump cuts, or leech the color out, or blur the image in some arty way. Whatever. It still looks dead.

You can't buy Keanu as a sadist, but you do worry about the guys who wrote the screenplay.

Exactly the kind of movie you might happen upon while watching Cinemax in your hotel room and think, 'This'll do till Conan comes on.'

The Watcher proves to be low on suspense and high on contrivances.

First-time director Joe Charbanic seems to have watched too many music videos.

Tired plot and disastrous casting.

If I never see another scene in which a woman is bound and gagged, while her killer struts around the room basking in his own psychotic cleverness, I won't mind a bit.

Not half bad as a rental.

Nasty, sadistic, ugly and pointless.

One of the lamest serial killer thrillers of the post-Silence of the Lambs era.

Dreadful performances, scanty motivation and excruciating dialogue.

The script sucks, the directing sucks, and, as much as I do like him, Keanu sucks.

Peters out like a late-night drunk when its threadbare plot and poorly drawn supporting characters start to stand out like a row of empty shot glasses.

The most fun you can have with this insultingly formulaic and utterly predictable film is trying to guess which cliche will be next.

A leaden, somber and suspenseless thriller.

The scenario involving a seductive predator obsessed with female loners is not coherent enough to seduce an audience.