the watcher netflix movie review

‘The Watcher’ Sucks the Suspense From a True-Life Horror Story: TV Review

By Daniel D'Addario

Daniel D'Addario

Chief TV Critic

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As it’s gone on, Ryan Murphy’s Netflix deal has revealed how many topics fascinate him — and how rigidly fixed in the past are his manners of addressing them.

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As written by Wiedeman, the story is a nightmare optimized for the age of Zillow; the real-life family at its center (the Broadduses, rather than the Brannocks) live in a purgatory of suspicion, unable to trust the intentions of neighbors who seem benign or quirky. Here, the people the Brannocks meet often open from a position of outré hostility, ironing out much of the magazine story’s insight about the ways in which suburban rage veils itself in politeness.

The cast does acquit themselves well. Naomi Watts has been asked to do more interesting work in the genre in the films “The Ring” and “Funny Games,” but is strong here, though underwritten (her career as an artist is underexplored, while marital tension she feels is more gestured at than shown). Cannavale, when his character’s growing mania over what his family is enduring is given space to breathe, is excellent. Jennifer Coolidge, as the realtor who sold the Brannocks their home, and Noma Dumezweni, as a sleuth helping them, stand out as the people the family meets who have real richness and dimension. Eventually, most other characters on the show come to seem as flat and two-dimensional as the board on which Dean keeps track of his investigation.

It has been an interesting moment for Murphy, whose possibly waning Netflix deal recently bore a toxic kind of fruit. His cumbersomely titled series on the life of Jeffrey Dahmer is an undeniable zeitgeist hit, even as it’s drawn sharp criticism for its indulgence of violence and its blithe treatment of real-life murders. Here, he veers in a different direction, not wallowing in the horror of what one family experienced but using that as a basic template for a somewhat zany, zippy whodunit. By the time we reach a coda demonstrating the trauma and dislocation both Dean and Nora feel, it’s almost hard to know how to take it: Their world is one of so little gravity that it’s hard to understand, based on the oddity and randomness we’ve seen up until the show’s ending, why these characters in an unrelatable, ultimately unremarkable fiction didn’t just bounce back.

“The Watcher” premiered on Netflix on Thursday, October 13.

• Production: Executive producers: Ryan Murphy, Ian Brennan, Alexis Martin Woodall, Eric Kovtun, Bryan Unkeless, Eric Newman, Paris Barclay, Naomi Watts, Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost, Scoop Wasserstein.
• Cast: Cast: Naomi Watts, Bobby Cannavale, Jennifer Coolidge , Mia Farrow, Margo Martindale, Terry Kinney, Joe Mantello, Richard Kind, Noma Dumezweni, Christopher McDonald, Michael Nouri, Isabel Gravitt, Henry Hunter Hall, Luke David Blumm

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‘the watcher’ review: ryan murphy’s starry netflix real-estate chiller isn’t worth the investment.

The drama centers on a couple (Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale) whose dream home becomes a nightmare when they start receiving threatening anonymous letters.

By Angie Han

Television Critic

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Sometime in 2014, a family who’d just moved into their dream home in the upscale suburb of Westfield, New Jersey, started getting ominous letters from someone identifying themselves as “ The Watcher .” Four years later, those events were chronicled by Reeves Wiedeman in a New York article that immediately went viral.

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As spooky true stories go, 657 Boulevard’s is a relatively simple one: Though the letters indicated a bone-chilling familiarity with and possessiveness of the home and the people in it, promising to “watch and wait for the day when the young blood [children] will be mine again,” the torment waged by The Watcher was psychological rather than physical. At the time when the article was published, the case had not yet been solved, which only added to the intrigue.

The Watcher beefs up the saga by introducing more violent, more outrageous, just-plain-more twists. The series flirts with supernatural elements, a QAnon-ish conspiracy theory and (briefly, inexplicably) the looming specter of cancel culture. The plot beats move by briskly enough to hold a viewer’s attention; it certainly helps that all seven chapters clock in at under an hour, a blessing in the era of single episodes that run longer than most feature films . If I rarely found myself intensely engaged, I never found myself bored, either.

But the sum total of all these additives is bloat, not depth. Dean ( Bobby Cannavale ) and Nora Brannock ( Naomi Watts ), parents of a teenage daughter (Isabel Gravitt) and a preadolescent son (Luke David Blum), hem and haw in seemingly every episode about whether to cut their losses and resell the home or stick to their guns and stay — which on the one hand seems perfectly understandable from a human perspective and on the other gets repetitive over the course of the series.

That applies to the plot, which is far from airtight, but also to the tone, which veers all over the place. Watts and Cannavale are playing out an intense psychodrama about a couple who find that the stresses of their new home deepen the cracks already existing within their marriage, and Cannavale is particularly compelling as a man gradually consumed by his drive to protect and provide for his family at any cost. At the same time, the characters surrounding them tend to be exaggerated in everything from their costumes to their mannerisms to their dialogue, but stop somewhere short of full-blown camp, as if they’re American Horror Story characters trying to blend into a Conjuring movie. The Watcher as a whole is left in an awkward middle ground, too straight-faced for sheer juicy fun and too silly for any real profundity.

Still, The Watcher has its pleasures from moment to moment, thanks in large part to a murderer’s row of beloved character actors able to chew through even the flimsiest of characterizations and sloppiest of storylines: Margo Martindale and Richard Kind as a nosy couple in ugly matching tracksuits; Mia Farrow and Terry Kinney as a pair of adult siblings who look like the American Gothic painting come to life; Joe Mantello as the slipperiest and most unsettling of them all, an ordinary-looking man spouting monologues worthy of Rorschach from Watchmen .

And underneath all the extraneous plot twists, the letters themselves lose little of their deliciously unnerving power in their translation to the screen. The Watcher expands the paranoia spurred by the letters into a broader, more nebulous sense of anxiety that stretches beyond the walls of 657 Boulevard. It tugs at the sense that the world is a fundamentally dangerous and devious place, that there will always be too much change and not enough money, that we’ve been robbed of the security and comfort promised to us by the American Dream. Once we’ve been sucked into the Brannocks’ mindset, it’s difficult not to see everyone on screen in terms of what they might stand to gain from terrifying the family out of their home; it seems a deeply isolating way to live.

But the mood evaporates before the credits have finished rolling on the finale. At the center of The Watcher is a home that invites obsession — whether from the mysterious Watcher claiming to have watched the house and its occupants for decades, or from the Brannocks fixating on 657 Boulevard as the manifestation of both their most cherished dreams and their most feared nightmares, or from local oddballs who have their own reasons, from the mundane to the vaguely eldritch, for wanting the house to remain frozen in time. The Watcher itself casts no such spell. It’s a nice enough home, if you want to stop in and look around a while. You’ll forget it by the time you drive off.

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Who Was The Watcher? Every Theory & Update

The watcher ends realistically (and that's bad), the watcher causing spike in nightmares & sleepless nights for netflix users.

• The ending of The Watcher reveals a hidden secret meaning, keeping true to the real unsolved case it's based on.
• Characters become embroiled in paranoia and trauma due to mysterious letters, unveiling dark truths in the end.
• The power of paranoia and the unknown neighbor is the central theme, leaving viewers in suspense and fear.

The ending of Netflix’s The Watcher has proved divisive, yet the series' ambiguous coda has a hidden secret meaning. The Watcher is a Ryan Murphy miniseries loosely based on the true story of 657 Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey. Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale play the fictionalized couple Nora and Dean Braddock, who move into a new home with their family and then begin receiving anonymous threatening letters warning them against making any alterations to the house.

The Watcher takes many major liberties with its real-life inspiration. Most of the story depicted on screen is fiction, outside the mysterious letters, the location of the house, and the paranoia and trauma that they caused for the couple involved. After seemingly revealing that the titular threat is Theodora (Noma Dumezweni), a private investigator whom the Braddocks have hired, the series finale of The Watcher ends without ever revealing the true identity of the letter-writer. In this regard, The Watcher is true to the real-life story upon which the show is based, as the case remains unsolved to this day.

The Netflix series The Watcher is an atypical crime drama that ends ambiguously. Here are the most likely suspects and theories from the show.

What Happens In The Watcher’s Ending?

It's revealed that theodora sent the letters.

At the end of The Watcher , the characters Nora and Dean Braddock discover that their private investigator, Theodora, has been hospitalized with cancer. In what seems like a classic twisty ending to a Netflix mystery show, the dying Theodora admits that she was the one who sent the letters. She explains that she had bought 657 Boulevard because it was her dream home, only to be forced to sell it when she couldn’t afford the place.

When her husband died, she realized he had hidden away over $1 million. Thus, she could in fact afford the house, leading her to concoct a bizarre scheme to pen threatening letters in order to convince the Braddocks to leave the house.

Why Did Theodora Claim She Was The Watcher?

She was trying to provide closure for the braddock family.

Theodora explains she hired actors to play the pig-tailed woman who appeared in Dean and Nora’s bedroom, all in an attempt to get her house back. However, at Theodora’s funeral, her daughter refutes these claims, and then the Braddocks learn from their neighbor Mo ( Margo Martindale, from the cast of Mrs. America ) that Theodora never lived in the house.

In The Watcher 's rare, dark, double twist ending, it turns out that Theodora was lying as she lay dying, trying to give the Braddocks some closure by claiming to be the Watcher since she was never able to uncover the actual assailant who tormented the couple while she was on the case.

What Happened To Karen In 657 Boulevard?

Much to the shock of viewers, karen wasn't the villain.

When the ending of The Watcher reveals Theodora was innocent after all, the suspicious realtor Karen ( The White Lotus 's Jennifer Coolidge) seems to be a prime suspect. She made no secret of the fact that she wanted 657 Boulevard for herself, she could have been the girl in the pigtails, and she could have written the letters that threatened the Braddocks. As a realtor, Karen was also likely to know all about the house’s secret subterranean tunnels and could have used these to scare the Braddocks into moving out.

The reason that Karen’s dog is killed and why she receives a letter from the Watcher is so that The Watcher ’s ending can firmly disprove the possibility of her being the title villain.

However, like many Ryan Murphy movies and shows , the twist ending of The Watcher completely disproves this theory when Karen does move into 657 Boulevard after the Braddocks leave the house. She survives about 48 hours in the house before she is chased out by a masked assailant, and in that time, she suffers more than the Braddocks did during their entire residence in the house.

The reason that Karen’s dog is killed and why she receives a letter from the Watcher is so that The Watcher ’s ending can firmly disprove the possibility of her being the title villain. Since Karen is the most obvious suspect, her traumatic experience is necessary to make it clear that The Watcher ’s ending removes any lingering suspicion from her character.

In his miniseries The Watcher, Ryan Murphy attempts to balance truth and crime-series tropes. However, his version is too realistic to be satisfying.

Was John Graff A Real Person?

John graff in the watcher was fictional (but based on a real murderer).

Like many true-crime shows on Netflix, The Watcher plays fast and loose with the facts of the case that it is based on. Despite what some sources claim, John Graff was not a real person. The character is based on real-life murderer John List, who did tragically kill his family in Westfield, New Jersey.

List had nothing to do with the 657 Boulevard case and no connection to the story

However, List had nothing to do with the 657 Boulevard case and no connection to the story, making John Graff a fictional creation with a grim real-life inspiration. The reason that The Watcher ’s ending adds Graff to the show’s list of characters is likely to accentuate comparisons between the real-life story and more explicitly supernatural scary stories, such as The Amityville Horror .

Is Dean Braddock Becoming The Watcher In The End?

It would be too much of a creative deviation for him to become the villain.

Dean Braddock’s inability to save his family from the Watcher causes the character to obsess over the villain, leading his and Nora’s marriage into trouble . Like Jack Torrance in The Shining or George Lutz, the patriarch of the unfortunate family seen in The Amityville Horror , Dean Braddock eventually flirts with outright madness by the time The Watcher ’s dark ending rolls around. During a therapy session, he brings up the house unprompted, and, when he tells Nora he is at a job interview, he secretly revisits 657 Boulevard and watches the new inhabitants of the house as they collect their mail.

The show is still based on a real-life case, and the real people involved weren’t accused of fabricating the letters, nor did they torment the next inhabitants of the home.

However, this doesn’t mean Dean is now the Watcher. For one thing, Dean doesn’t do anything actively malevolent. For another, Nora also visits the house immediately after he leaves, meaning she also hasn’t been able to let go of the events that transpired there. Most importantly, although The Watcher follows Netflix's true crime show protocol and changes a lot of facts.

The show is still based on a real-life case, and the real people involved weren’t accused of fabricating the letters, nor did they torment the next inhabitants of the home. As such, even with its fictionalized elements, it would be too much for The Watcher ’s ending to imply otherwise.

What The Watcher’s Ending Really Means

The netflix series is about the power of paranoia.

The Watcher ’s ending is not as straightforward as those of many other Netflix shows, but that is only because it is based on a real-life unsolved case. The lack of resolution in the real-life story is the primary reason that The Watcher ’s ending can’t simply unmask its villain. However, the other reason that the Netflix hit can’t have a tidy conclusion is that The Watcher is about the terror of not knowing your neighbor, of never being sure who you live near and what they are up to, and of the impact that a culture of anonymity has on small communities.

The Watcher is about the terror of not knowing your neighbor, of never being sure who you live near and what they are up to, and of the impact that a culture of anonymity has on small communities.

The Watcher casts suspicion on almost all of its cast and exonerates almost none of them precisely so that the Netflix show can prove that there is no knowing who the Watcher was, and that might be the scariest ending of all.

Netflix has conducted a psychology study that shows a significant increase in nightmares and difficulty sleeping for The Watcher viewers.

How The Watcher Ending Sets Up Season 2

The Watcher season 2 has been confirmed, despite the fact that the Netflix true-crime show was initially billed as a miniseries. The ending of season 1 was incredibly ambiguous, especially since it wasn't originally intended to have a follow-up, and it mirrored the mystery of its real life inspiration. As such, what could happen in season 2 remains incredibly ambiguous, but there are a few hints from the ending of The Watcher which could be clues.

So far little has been revealed of what the story will be and how season 1 set it up

Firstly, Dean's descent into obsession could become a key plot point when The Watcher returns. While he himself isn't being set up as the Watcher, his growing preoccupation with the house and the identity of those stalking his family may lead to him remaining to be involved. There's also, of course, the fate of Karen to consider. She was chased out of the house by the real Watcher, meaning they're still out there and definitely do exist. This means there's still much for Dean to uncover should he return.

However, there's also the chance that the show will take on more of an anthology set-up. This would mean that The Watcher season 2 focuses on a different case of suburban horror, rather than continuing the story of the Braddock family and 657 Boulevard. The second season was confirmed by Netflix back in 2022, and so far little has been revealed of what the story will be and how season 1 set it up, but it's likely that when the first trailers eventually arrive it will be much clearer which key details from The Watcher ending will remain relevant in the show moving forward.

The Watcher (2022)

Based on the true story and the New York Magazine article that covered it by Reeves Wiedeman, the Watcher is a true crime limited series created by the minds behind the American Horror Story franchise. The story follows Nora Brannock and her husband, Dean Brannock, as they move into the home of their dreams. However, those dreams become nightmares once they find themselves the targets of an endless string of threatening letters from an individual known as "The Watcher," a man who stalks them at every turn. With a neighborhood full of just as many secrets and unwelcoming characters, the Brannocks may have taken on more than they can handle. 

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Surrender to the Batshittery That Is The Watcher

“It knows what scares you” was the tagline for 1982’s Poltergeist , a horror classic that doubled as a cautionary tale about the dark side of desirable suburban real estate. The Watcher , the new Netflix series created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, is also a suburban-real-estate cautionary tale that knows what scares you. More than that, though, it knows what obsesses you.

This limited series — based loosely on the story Reeves Wiedeman wrote for this magazine about a couple who bought their dream house in Westfield, New Jersey, only to be terrorized by anonymous letters from someone who creepily called themselves “The Watcher” — is subtextually a commentary on a variety of contemporary fixations. Among them: the housing market, home renovation, conspiracy theories, alcoholism, social media, and, of course, money. Murphy, Brennan, and their fellow writers and filmmakers (several of whom also worked on the duo’s extremely popular Dahmer ) throw a kitchen sink of issues and true-crime tropes into these episodes, as well as a kitchen island controversially accented with butcher-block countertops. While that approach has its problems, namely an abundance of plot holes and red herrings, it makes for absorbing television, in part because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The Watcher can be over the top, but like the best of Murphy’s work, it knows it’s being over the top and often leans into its own excessiveness with a wink and a smirk. This is an addictive work of television that invites us to examine our own frivolous, sometimes dangerous addictions.

Like the true story on which it is based, The Watcher follows a married couple, Dean and Nora Brannock (Bobby Cannavale and Naomi Watts), as they purchase a majestically large house an hour outside of New York City at the coveted address of 657 Boulevard. Like the couple that had this experience in real life, they begin to receive letters from an anonymous writer who says they are watching the house and implies it may be haunted. The details in the letters — about the Brannocks’ children, Ellie (Isabel Gravitt) and Carter (Luke David Blumm), and the family’s behavior — become increasingly specific and disturbing. The Broadduses, the couple who actually went through this traumatic experience, never moved into 657 Boulevard. But in the Netflix version, the Brannocks, who sink literally all of their savings into the property, fully occupy the home while attempting to figure out who’s harassing them and why, an effort that, particularly for Dean, becomes all consuming.

Beyond that basic outline, Murphy and Brennan, who between them share co-writing credits on all seven episodes (Murphy also directs two), take significant liberties with the truth, which is probably for the best since the Broadduses apparently asked to make the fictional family resemble them as little as possible . Consequently, a series of events that was genuinely bizarre becomes even freakier once the writers start sprinkling in even more wild details. Ryan Murphy’s Law very much applies here: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong in the most batshit way possible. Within the context of The Watcher , I really do mean that as a compliment.

Not long after settling in and starting to refurbish their kitchen, the Brannocks establish tense relationships with several of their neighbors, including Mitch (Richard Kind) and Mo (Margo Martindale), a husband and wife who have no compunctions about coming into the Brannocks’ yard to pluck arugula. “Let’s go make the most delicious fucking salad of our entire lives,” Mo hisses in Dean’s direction after he shouts at them for trespassing in the name of lettuce collection.

Eccentric local historian Pearl Winslow (an astutely cast Mia Farrow) and her intellectually disabled brother Jasper (Terry Kinney) also have a tendency to pop up unannounced, sometimes even in the house’s dumbwaiter. The people that Nora and Dean turn to for help — an arrogant, unmotivated local police detective (Christopher McDonald); a young security specialist named Dakota (Henry Hunter Hall), who takes an interest in Ellie; and friend/real-estate agent Karen Calhoun (Jennifer Coolidge) — offer only modest help. They have better luck once they hire Theodora Birch (an authoritative Noma Dumezweni), a private investigator more willing to follow leads than the cops. But that “better luck” propels Dean down a rabbit hole of paranoia and mad theorizing, jeopardizing his marriage and his career while turning everyone in the Brannocks’ orbit into a potential suspect.

How easy it is to get sucked into true crime, whether it involves you personally or is something you’re consuming as content — this is a dynamic that The Watcher understands well. This show shouts out every cockamamie possible explanation for those letters with the deranged glee of someone who just snorted a mountain of Adderall, watched every episode of the original The Staircase as well as the scripted version of The Staircase, and is extremely eager to share their many thoughts about the owl theory. Watching The Watcher is undeniably a rush, so much so that even when certain plot twists don’t make sense — and trust me that many of them do not — it doesn’t even matter. Forget about logic, just give us another hit of the sweet, preposterous idea that there’s an underground blood cult terrorizing Bobby Cannavale.

It helps, too, that the cast is so fully committed. Cannavale and Watts are not shy about leaning into their characters’ less attractive qualities. Nora’s a bit of a social climber, while Dean is impulsive and not always honest, which bolsters the notion that we should be wary of everyone in this auspicious Jersey Zip Code. Coolidge makes sure that Karen really lives up to her name — “We’re not ready yet,” she tells a server at the local country club, “and my napkin smells like vinegar” — and infuses her with a wonderfully odd combination of real-estate agent chipperness and Debbie Downer bluntness. “I don’t want to bum you out,” she tells Nora at one point with utter sincerity, “but I don’t think Dean’s going to be employed much longer.”

Then there’s Farrow, the onetime Rosemary’s Baby star who seems to be having a ball as Pearl, the kind of busybody chatterbox who quickly becomes your worst nightmare if she engages you in conversation. She regularly delivers hilarious lines — “Butcher-block countertops? Are you turning your house into a delicatessen?” she squawks at Dean — with a perfectly measured deadpan that makes it clear Pearl has no idea how strangely she comes across. The Watcher ’s evocation of classic horror doesn’t end with Farrow’s presence, either. The desaturated color palette and piano-centered score composed by Morgan Kibby and David Klotz, and some of the story beats, are reminiscent of not only Rosemary’s Baby but also ’70s scare fare like The Omen , The Exorcist, and John Carpenter’s original Halloween . Unlike Dahmer or much of American Horror Story , this Murphy project doesn’t overdo it with the gore. This is a work of psychological horror, pretty much full stop.

Murphy & Co. couple that vibe with an obvious desire to capture the zeitgeist of the COVID era. Many of the societal concerns that have taken center stage since the pandemic began — cancel culture, QAnon, religious extremism, the sense that danger cannot be escaped even in supposed safe spaces like one’s own home — are aggressively nodded to here. The longer you watch The Watcher , the more you start to feel like Dean, untethered, like you’re living in a world that has become completely cockeyed. Yes, there is a long list of quibbles and questions that can legitimately be raised about just about everything that happens in this series. But that also feels weirdly appropriate. The Watcher is a series about how it feels when nothing makes sense anymore. Regardless of where you live, we’ve all been there.

• vulture section lede
• the watcher
• ryan murphy
• new york magazine

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‘The Watcher’ Review: An Outstandingly Terrifying Depiction of a True Story

“The Watcher,” Netflix’s newest terrifying miniseries, is not just a scary show — the horrifying tale is a real cold case. The miniseries follows Dean and Nora Brannock, a couple based on the real story of Derek and Maria Broaddus, who bought a home in Westfield, New Jersey in June 2014. In “The Watcher,” the family’s beautiful new suburban home soon turns into a nightmare when they begin receiving eerie letters from a person who calls themself “The Watcher.” With their livelihood, safety, and image at stake, Nora (Naomi Watts) and Dean Brannock (Bobby Cannavale) are willing to do anything they can to find out who is terrorizing their lives.

Watts and Cannavale effectively bring to life compelling dialogue and powerful imagery that transforms the series. The miniseries demands more than suspense alone, and both lead actors are outstanding in their increasingly desperate portrayal of parents motivated to do anything to keep their family and home safe. Ultimately, their performances build tension on screen even more than the figure of “the watcher,” as in each horror sequence, the camera focuses mainly on the Brannocks’ faces and their convincing desperation for answers.

Indeed, the miniseries is not just eerie, but suspensefully terrifying. “The Watcher” sets itself apart from other stalker films by focusing on unexpected sources of fear apart from the main antagonist. Throughout the series, the Brannock’s neighbors are a searingly real source of terror. Each of the Brannock’s neighbors plays a distinct role in the feeling of suspense that builds with each episode — the weird, incomprehensible quirks of the characters are simply unnerving. In turn, viewers find themselves not only frightened by a threatening stalker, but uneasy in the scenes of the mysterious neighbors.

Additionally, characters such as Karen Coulhoun (Jennifer Coolidge) give the series a dimension beyond pure horror — an enticing balance of humorous and scary moments allows the miniseries to shine. Coolidge, best known for similar comedic roles, also displays her ability in the horror genre. Through scenes of witty remarks and unapologetic banter, Coolidge initially provides a much-needed comic relief to the otherwise dark series, making her screams of horror at the end of the series that much more effective.

Moreover, the series’s soundtrack successfully creates a lasting sense of unease and uncertainty. Eerie, repetitive tones turn seemingly normal shots into frightening ones, and the show’s simple yet creepy main theme is sure to stay in viewers’ heads longer than they may wish. Thus, the series effectively establishes a murder mystery feel that keep viewers invested in solving the case.

Accordingly, audiences may be disappointed to discover that the mystery of “The Watcher” remains unsolved at the very end of the series, making for an unsatisfying — but lingering — conclusion. Whether it be the author of the letters, the possible neighbor involvement, or questions about the suspicious private investigator, the series offers many possible suspects that viewers can speculate about while watching and after finishing the series. Viewers, undoubtedly fascinated by the cold case, are likely to spend hours thinking and learning more about the Broadduses long after the credits roll.

—Staff writer Monique I. Vobecky can be reached at [email protected] . Follow her on Twitter @moniquevobecky .

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The Watcher review – Ryan Murphy and Netflix deliver another bizarre true-crime story

Ryan Murphy delivers another eminently binge-able true-crime story, though thankfully without the exploitative ickiness of his recent work.

This review of The Watcher is spoiler-free. 

Ryan Murphy is currently on a roll at Netflix , though I suppose you could quibble about whether “roll” is exactly the right term. His latest bit of business was  Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story , a lurid and uncomfortable retelling of Jeffrey Dahmer’s crimes, imprisonment, and death, with long-time Murphy collaborator Evan Peters in the title role.  The Watcher   is a similar bit of work; a dramatization of a true story that took place in New Jersey, in which a suburban family was terrorized by letters from an anonymous stalker calling themselves “The Watcher” and implying that their children would imminently be used as blood sacrifices.

I mean, talk about neighbors from hell.

Given the immediately enticing mystery and the lack of any clear conclusion, there’s no wonder that Murphy was interested in the story. He has stuffed his version of it with fine actors and stretched it across seven pacey episodes in a limited series that has all of his hallmarks without the unwelcome feeling of tastelessness surrounding the Dahmer project. The result is an eminently binge-able true-crime story that is actually enhanced by being plucked from reality and doesn’t present any awkward moral problems given the lack of actual victims  in the story itself.

Of course, “victims” is a relative term. The family at the story’s heart, the Broadduses, were obviously victimized, but that isn’t quite the same thing as the litany of murdered young men whose families had to watch Murphy and Netflix profit from their misery. There will always be an element of this in any dramatization of a true story, but the more morally manageable it is the better off everyone feels, and I never felt as uncomfortable here as I did while watching and reviewing  Monster . Mileage may vary, but the essential weirdness — which would, ironically, be too farfetched to be believed if we didn’t know it actually happened — gives  The Watcher  the appearance of pure fiction.

The Broadduses have been renamed here. Now they’re the Brannocks: parents Dean ( Bobby Cannavale ) and Nora ( Naomi Watts ), and kids Ellie ( Isabel Gravitt ) and Carter ( Luke David Blumm ). 657 Boulevard is surrounded by eccentrics, and they all quickly become suspects — siblings Pearl ( Mia Farrow ) and Jasper ( Terry Kinney ) Winslow on one side, husband and wife Mitch ( Richard Kind ) and Mo ( Margo Martindale ) on the other. Even those who seem like allies apparently can’t be trusted. Karen ( Jennifer Coolidge ), the real estate agent who sold the Brannocks the house in the first place, is an old friend of Nora’s who keeps pushing her to sell up at a loss, and the young security specialist, Dakota ( Henry Hunter Hall ), offers overpriced home security and a very attentive eye on 16-year-old Ellie. Even the private detective Dean hires to look into the threats, Theodora ( Noma Dumezweni ), comes across as a little too enigmatic for her own good.

A sweeping glance over the above paragraph reveals how many fine talents are involved in this project, but it remains Cannavale’s show all the same. He really seems to get Murphy’s signature blend of horror and dark humor, but he also has a thinly-veiled air of menace about him, as with his overprotectiveness around Ellie’s fashion choices and the way he spirals into spiteful tirades against the neighbors. Watts is an assured presence, but she’s given less to actually play, and she’s intended to be a beacon of surety in the midst of wild eccentricity, so it’s a thankless part that she’s nonetheless great in.

Fans of Murphy’s won’t have any trouble recognizing the usual beats in both tone and structure, but there’s a welcome vein of ambiguous supernaturalism in The Watcher  that gives it something a lot of true-crime stories lack. Often, the piano music tinkling through old intercoms, neighborhood weirdos hiding in dumbwaiters, and rumors of blood sacrifice cults feel more like the work of Mike Flanagan , or Murphy’s more obviously fictional stuff like American Horror Story , than something that actually happened to real people. It makes for a disconcerting vibe that helps the show deliver Halloween thrills without veering too far away from the core horror of being watched by persons unknown and unseen. It’ll be mega-popular, make no mistake about that, and unlike  Monster , I’d say it probably deserves the attention.

You can stream The Watcher exclusively on Netflix.

Additional reading:

• Highest Rated and Best Netflix Series
• Is  The Watcher  based on a true story?
• The Watcher  season 1, episode 1 recap .

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• Breaking Down <i>The Watcher</i>’s Fantastically Frustrating Conclusion

Breaking Down The Watcher ’s Fantastically Frustrating Conclusion

Spoiler alert: This piece discusses major plot points of Netflix’s The Watcher , including the finale.

On Sept. 21, Ryan Murphy unveiled Dahmer—Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story , a true-crime thriller that has since become, depending on your metric of choice, either the biggest success or the exploitative nadir of his Netflix career. Now, just over three weeks later, as the controversy surrounding that show continues to simmer, he’s back with another new true-crime thriller. Time will tell whether The Watcher turns out to be a hit with subscribers (though I’m betting it will be). But after watching all seven episodes, one thing I know for sure is that it’s the first really good drama series Murphy has made since leaving Fox for Netflix in 2018. And that’s thanks in large part to a serpentine plot that lays the groundwork for an exhilaratingly inconclusive finale.

An adaptation of Reeves Wiedeman’s eerie New York magazine article from 2018, The Watcher follows a family that buys a dream home in the wealthy suburb of Westfield, NJ, only to find that someone else has already, in a sense, laid claim to it. In the real-life story , they started receiving typed notes from a correspondent identified only as the Watcher, who claimed to have been watching their property for “the better part of two decades,” as their father and grandfather had done before them. Along with making vague threats centered on the children—or, as the Watcher calls them, “young blood”—in the family, the letters posed such chilling questions as: “Do you know what lies within the walls of 657 Boulevard?” There were plenty of suspicious neighbors, but the local police seemed pretty apathetic, even as weird things kept happening. Eventually, scared out of their wits and facing ever-worsening financial straits, they put the house up for sale. Unsolved when the original article ran, the case remains a mystery in 2022.

An endless list of suspects

These facts form the skeleton of Murphy and co-creator Ian Brennan’s series, but unlike so many other docudramas, The Watcher breaks early and often from the official record. They alter not just the names of the family, which has already suffered through an unauthorized Lifetime movie called The Watcher , but also the number of kids and their ages. Characters are added, subtracted, composited, and embellished to better serve an all-star cast as well as a plot that examines each suspect in turn. There’s no question that such creative license was necessary (the real family never even moved into the house). And Murphy restrains himself from abusing it with the kind of baroque inanity that makes so many of his recent shows so exhausting.

The Watcher does what good psychological thrillers do: it takes everyday fears to nightmarish extremes. One disconcerting aspect of the article is that, rather than uncovering too few suspects in a town that prides itself on safety, it finds too many. The show magnifies that sense of community dysfunction. Protagonists Nora ( Naomi Watts ) and Dean Brannock (Bobby Cannavale) and their kids, 16-year-old Ellie (Isabel Gravitt) and her little brother Carter (Luke David Blumm), are surrounded by weirdos. The prickly couple next door, Mitch and Mo (Richard Kind and Margo Martindale, a match made in TV heaven), wear absurd matching outfits, orient their lawn chairs so that they’re staring directly at the Brannocks’ house, and brazenly harvest arugula on the family’s property. Elsewhere in the neighborhood, historical-preservation control freak Pearl ( Mia Farrow ) takes the Brannocks’ interior design choices personally, while her emotionally disturbed brother Jasper (Terry Kinney) hides in their disused dumbwaiter. Then there’s real-estate agent Karen (Jennifer Coolidge, maintaining her post- White Lotus Jenaissance momentum ), an old classmate of Nora’s who espouses a sort of demented-girlboss wealth gospel and seems overly eager to earn a second commission by reselling the house.

A private investigator, Theodora Birch (Noma Dumezweni), whom the Brannocks hire on the advice of a dismissive police department, digs up even more suspects. The cast swells. Former 657 owner Andrew (Seth Gabel) spews au courant adrenochrome conspiracy theories. A 19-year-old home-security entrepreneur, Dakota (Henry Hunter Hall), allows himself to be seduced by Ellie. A local teacher, Roger (Michael Nouri), is known for having his students write anonymous letters to Westfield homes they love. Theodora brings news of a patriarch who slaughtered his wife and kids in the house, then disappeared, in the ‘90s. The possibility arises that Dean invented the Watcher because he doesn’t want to admit to Nora that they really can’t afford the $3 million mansion. And so on and so forth into buyer’s-remorse oblivion.

Every character is a little bit guilty

That the real Watcher has never been apprehended might seem like a liability, but it actually becomes an asset. Instead of inventing a pat conclusion, Murphy and Brennan capitalize on the shaggy-dogness of it all. While the big mystery never gets solved, little ones often do—in ways that only make the letters seem like less of an anomaly. Episodes after we, and the Brannocks, watch paramedics haul away two bloody bodies from Mitch and Mo’s house, it turns out they were just out of town; their troubled adult son faked their deaths. Dean admits to sending a single note, but not the original ones. Then he gets fired because someone sends his boss a video of a strange woman slipping into bed with Dean. We know it was Dakota because he admits to it, before realizing he has no idea how the woman in the footage got into the house.

In other words, everyone is at least a little unhinged, and most have done something awful—including the Brannocks. Dean allows the stresses of his career and new home to gradually transform him into the prototypical rich, white, conservative suburban dad. Fixated on his daughter’s nascent sexuality, he sics the cops on Dakota, who is Black, even though she’s past the age of consent and it’s perfectly legal for the two of them to date. When Dean tries to confront Mo about Andrew’s claim that his three-year-old son walked in on her, Mitch, and a cabal of the town’s elders sacrificing a baby in the basement of 657, she rightly equates the accusation with the deranged conspiracy thinking of QAnon .

What’s the matter with Westfield?

Not that The Watcher is just a commentary on conspiracy theories. It’s about the broader, ambient paranoia of contemporary American life. The Brannocks spend a fortune on security and surveillance, but it only ends up eroding their sense of safety even further. Theodora, a former jazz singer, got so obsessed with true crime that she began a second career as a P.I. to distract her from a cancer diagnosis. Moreover, the show repeatedly confirms that people have reason to be afraid—although there’s rarely a connection between the object of their fears and what’s actually threatening them. The man who may or may not be John Graff (Joe Mantello) lectures Dean about church, female purity, and an alarmist theory that predicts the country is due for a generational crisis. But Graff, if he exists at all, is a psychotic killer who murdered his entire family, and thus obviously posed a far greater threat to them than atheists or teen sex.

Regardless of his relationship to reality, Graff embodies something genuinely dark within Westfield: an aging community’s simultaneous fetish for youth (a.k.a. “young blood”) and resistance to change (i.e. historical preservation). This is what makes the place such a culture shock to a family that has just relocated from New York City. Murphy and Brennan pay conspicuous homage to Rosemary’s Baby , from Farrow’s presence on the other side of the young-old binary to the basement baby sacrifice to the name Dakota shares with the Upper West Side building where Roman Polanski’s horror classic takes place. The Watcher is in part a reversal of that movie; it’s the suburbs that feel strange and sinister to people used to living in the city. There are political implications here, in an era of blue cities and red suburbs. But the show complicates that dynamic, too, when the Brannocks move back to Manhattan and find the subway messed up for hours one day because someone pushed two people onto the tracks.

There’s more thematic resonance where all of the above comes from, including the stuff that sits right on the surface, like money, real estate, women working for creative fulfillment vs. women working to get paid. This kitchen-sink approach to the making of meaning has often been Murphy’s downfall. His shows usually turn the artifice up to 11, then preach liberal bromides at the same volume, and it all becomes too noisy to enjoy. The Watcher , with its muted, Restoration Hardware color palette and naturalistic performances, communicates in a quieter register. And its surplus of ideas about what’s wrong with America right now—specifically, what’s wrong with white people in America’s suburbs right now—works because, well, everything is wrong.

Breaking down The Watcher finale

Which brings us to the show’s appropriately frustrating finale, whose series of fake and partial conclusions leave us no closer than we ever were to identifying a single guilty party. First there’s the compelling tease of Theodora’s own confession. She casts herself as the house’s previous owner and says that she sent the letters, invented the Graffs, reverse-engineered the Watcher based on her own knowledge of the town’s quirks. “This was never about you, Dean,” she tells him on her deathbed. “You’re a good man with a wonderful family. It was about the house. It was such a good house.” Alas, this isn’t The Usual Suspects ; the storyteller, which is what every detective really is, isn’t secretly the culprit. As Theodora’s daughter explains at the funeral, she was just trying to free the Brannocks from what had become self-perpetuated torture—and Dean believed her, at first, because he was so convinced of the house’s irresistible allure.

In a subsequent ending, Karen finally schemes her way into the house, only to be quickly driven out by a flooding bathtub and the murder of her dog. Maybe this means that she was the Watcher—and maybe Nora, who appears in Karen’s foyer to repeat that accusation, is responsible for one or more of the incidents that cause her to flee. Either way, a new family moves in and finds itself surrounded by neighborhood weirdos (who, in a plot point that’s either damning or kind of moving, have now found each other through Pearl’s historical preservation group). In the series’ final moments, we see them all in turn, plus Andrew, staring at 657 and its latest owners. Then Dean is there, too, though he introduces himself to his successor as—yikes—John. He calls Nora before heading home, but when he drives off, we see that she’s been trailing him the entire time.

Like the real case, The Watcher technically leaves its mystery unsolved. We don’t find out who sent those initial letters. If you were expecting a traditional whodunit, that’s exasperating. But we do learn a lot about the Brannocks and their neighbors. These admittedly broad, thin characters serve, individually, as metaphors for the contemporary plagues of surveillance, competition, greed, jealousy, bigotry, paranoia. Collectively, they’re a microcosm of a culture that tells us to mortgage every aspect of our lives in order to attain the trappings of wealth. So it makes sense that, on a thematic level, everyone is the Watcher, even largely well-meaning people like Theodora, in this panopticon of a society. And everyone is doing something they wouldn’t want anyone else to see.

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‘The Watcher’ Review: Ryan Murphy’s Next True Crime Netflix Series Is a Joyless Camp Fest

The 2018 New York Magazine feature “The Watcher” had all the makings of a taut, twisty and timely psychological thriller that triggered our universal neuroses about the illusions of privacy and safety in our own homes. Journalist Reeves Wiedeman unfurled a years-long saga of the real-life Broaddus family who paid a bit too much to fulfill their American dream of escaping the city and moving into an idyllic New Jersey suburb, only to find themselves trapped in a nightmare: Almost immediately after settling in, they begin receiving sinister letters threatening them and their children. The situation spins out of control, sending the family into paranoia (both justified and not) that pits neighbor against neighbor.

It’s easy to see why six different studios were eager to snap up the screen rights to Wiedeman’s feature, but it feels as though Netflix was trying to burn off this premium piece of IP … despite also throwing what was undoubtedly an enormous budget at it. The streamer’s second Ryan Murphy-helmed true-crime limited series in less than a month following the mammoth launch of “Dahmer,” “The Watcher” adaptation drains all the potential relatability and genuine terror out of the source material. With a subtler hand, and a much shorter runtime, a film could have explored the rich themes of the dark side of upward mobility and the erosion of civility among neighbors while serving up subtle but real scares, toying with the idea that the titular letter-writer could be any smiling neighbor at the grocery store.

Also Read: Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale Go Up Against a Stalker in Netflix’s ‘The Watcher’ Trailer (Video)

The neighbors in Murphy’s “The Watcher” wouldn’t be even remotely recognizable in the real world, so we get none of that all-too-believable dread. Instead, the fictionalized Nora and Dean Brannock (Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale) encounter a parade of caricatures in Westfield, New Jersey, each only too happy to rant about property lines and “you city folk.” Directly over the hedge of their new dreamhouse are Margo Martindale and Richard Kind, who are put to poor use as a bizarre Boomer couple who tell Dean to watch himself within seconds of meeting him. Mia Farrow and Terry Kinney play Pearl and Jasper Willow, a mother and son who walked straight out of “American Gothic.” Jennifer Coolidge manages to delight, as always, as a real estate agent who should be cast in “Selling Turnpike.”

If you know anything about the actual story, it’s hard to find anything to enjoy even in the fun performances. Murphy’s sledgehammer-like writing (he co-wrote and co-created the series with Ian Brennan, his partner on “Glee” and recently “Dahmer”) and cheap jump scares make for delicious entertainment when paired with the right subject matter, but “The Watcher” needed much more nuance and a 90-minute or less runtime. Yet even with seven episode, we don’t get a slow build of animosity and dread — we get dead ferrets and ridiculous monologues (including a surreal one from Noma Dumezweni as a jazz singer turned private investigator) and a bizarre subplot involving a 19-year-old security equipment entrepreneur (Henry Hunter Hall), all within the first episode.

If you’re in the mood for pure camp, “The Watcher” will entertain you for an hour or so before you’re yelling at it to get off your lawn.

“The Watcher” is now streaming on Netflix.

Also Read: ‘Dahmer’ Marks Ryan Murphy’s First Monster Hit for Netflix After 4 Years and a Half Dozen Tries

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Julia ( Maika Monroe ) knows that something is not right. Something is really, really "off" about the guy in the apartment building across the way, always staring at her. But when called upon to express her feelings, Julia falters. She can't find the words to express the sense of threat. She wonders if she's being paranoid. Or maybe it's her insomnia. She's new to Bucharest and doesn't speak the language. In general, she's disoriented and lonely. So maybe she's just not "reading" things correctly. Julia rationalizes away her growing sense of uneasiness and dread, she tries to talk herself out of her own perception, but still, her gut tells her: There is something not right here. I am not making this up. I am not overreacting. I am in danger. She should listen to her gut.

Chloe Okuno's "Watcher," a chilly and elegant thriller, embodies Julia's state of mind in every aspect: the visuals, sound design, production design, color scheme, not to mention Monroe's visceral central performance—all work together to express Julia's point of view, so much so that doubt arises in regards to Julia's reliability as the narrator of her own life. This is a stylized affair, and the care taken with every choice—the apartment interior, the furnishings, the color of the curtains, Julia's red sweater and red tights, etc.—is meticulous. The film crackles with icy dread. Silences are loud and sounds are even louder. Nothing has the right proportion. Ceilings are too high, stairways too long. Voices emerge as if from the bottom of a well. Spaces are empty that should be full and vice versa. The mundane is terrifying, and the terrifying seduces. Nothing feels right. This is highly subjective filmmaking. "Watcher" is Okuno's first feature, as well as a first feature for the cinematographer, Benjamin Kirk Nielsen , and the two together make a powerful team.

Julia and her husband Francis ( Karl Glusman ) have moved to Bucharest. He is half-Romanian, speaks the language, and works long hours, leaving Julia—transplanted, adrift—to her own devices. Trouble starts immediately in the cab ride from the airport to their new apartment. Francis and the taxi driver chat in Romanian. Julia doesn't understand a word being said. She is disoriented, especially when the two men appear to be talking about her. Okuno does not use subtitles, and this makes Julia's frustrations our own. She hovers on the sidelines, asking Francis, "What did he say? What did she say?" As the two enter their new apartment building, she glances up at the building across the way, and sees something eerie. In a wall of darkened windows, there's one that's dimly lit, and a man ( Burn Gorman ) stands there, staring down at them. It's probably nothing.

But every time she looks out her window, he's there. Thus begins Julia's emotional disintegration, beautifully tracked by Monroe, each scene building on what came before, until she is nearly unrecognizable from the woman we met at the start of the film. Julia starts to see the "watcher" out and about. He's sitting behind her at a matinee of Stanley Donen's "Charade" (or is he? It's hard to tell), Later, she sees him again at the grocery store. Julia is now legitimately spooked. Francis is somewhat supportive of his wife—or he tries to be—but he is also baffled at the turmoil his wife has descended into. There's a distinct sense from him that she's making a huge deal out of nothing.

"Watcher" is about the confusion between the voyeur and the voyeur's "object." When he looks at her, she looks back. She is as aware of him as he is of her. She's a "watcher" too. The boundaries blur. He infiltrates her every waking moment. But the terrifying thing is that no crime has been committed. It's not a crime to stand at your window and stare out at the opposite building. Such behavior is part of city life, as is people-watching. Much of this is well-trod ground (particularly Hitchcockian ground), and the references to " Rear Window ," both visually and thematically, are everywhere. But the film's acute psychological portrait of a scared lost woman, sleepless and possibly hallucinating, condescended to (lovingly, even worse) by the man who's supposed to have her back, is most reminiscent of "Rosemary's Baby," and the film's careful attention to interiors—doors left ajar, blind corners, vast uncrossable spaces, cramped elevators—is Polanski territory. Another Polanski film, "Repulsion," provides poignant reference points. Julia, wandering through the cavernous apartment, pinned to the spot by the watcher across the way, loses all sense of time, of her own self and its contours, just like Catherine Deneuve does in "Repulsion."

Julia the character is thinly drawn. This serves the genre (she's a projector screen for free-floating audience anxieties), but also makes her seem a bit of a cipher. Julia was an actress, and she gave it up to come to Romania with her husband. Does she have resentment about this? Was she in movies or theatre? Was she just "aspiring"? What's her plan now? Monroe's performance makes you forget the gaps in the character. She is simple and direct in her approach, and we watch as terror co-opts her life. Fear is not an emotion so much as it is an attack on the entire self. All systems shut down. Monroe embodies this.

While there are numerous "confrontations" in "Watcher," the terror here is mostly from the threat of what might happen. There's nothing scarier than that. The mind can imagine anything.

Now playing in theaters and available on digital platforms on June 21st.

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Watcher (2022)

Rated R for some blood violence, language, and some sexual material/nudity.

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The true story behind Netflix's The Watcher : Here's what really happened (and what didn't)

EW breaks down fact versus fiction in Ryan Murphy's horrifying TV series inspired by a real family that received threatening letters from an anonymous stalker.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Watcher .

Moving is a drag. Getting letters from a stalker the moment you settle into your new home, however, is pure hell. The story at the center of Ryan Murphy 's new Netflix series starring Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale might sound like a twisted work of fiction, but it's deeply rooted in the actual tale of a wealthy suburban family whose new life in an idyllic Westfield, N.J. home quickly turned into a nightmare after an anonymous person began dropping threatening notes into their mailbox shortly after their arrival.

Below, EW breaks down highlights from the show and the true stories behind them, and we get to the bottom of what the show invented for the sake of (admittedly petrifying) art.

Did someone calling themself "The Watcher" really torment a New Jersey family?

Yes. There wouldn't be the TV series without this foundational true crime story. As outlined in a 2018 piece published by The Cut , Derek and Maria Broaddus (portrayed by Cannavale and Watts as Dean and Nora Brannock in the series) moved into 657 Boulevard (the same address used in the program) in Westfield, N.J., in 2014 before they received a string of bone-chilling letters from an anonymous stalker claiming to be a protective "Watcher" of the building. The ordeal turned into a years-long saga involving dramatic clashes with an odd assortment of neighbors and extreme paranoia festering among the Broadduses and their children.

Though their names were changed for the series, which heavily embellishes other details of their lives and horror story, The Watcher writers incorporated real text from the letters sent to the Broadduses, including the bits about the Watcher desiring "young blood."

Are creepy neighbors Jasper and Pearl based on real people?

Seemingly, yes. In the show, Jasper (Terry Kinney) and Pearl Winslow ( Mia Farrow ) are the first set of peculiar neighbors that Nora and Dean meet upon arriving in Westfield. Instead of formally greeting them, Jasper meets the family after pulling his head out of a dumbwaiter and launches into a disturbing assertion about the human skeleton, telling them that a baby skeleton has "100 more bones than an adult skeleton." He pops up several times throughout the series, mostly after entering the private residence without permission — the Brannocks' son finds him hiding in the dumbwaiter at night, and he often wanders across their property line without permission, though Pearl promises the prior owners allowed him to explore at his will.

Pearl and Jasper seemed to be based on the Langford family, described as "a bit odd" in the Cut piece. Siblings Michael — who'd been diagnosed as a schizophrenic — and Abby Langford had lived in the neighboring house with their mother, Peggy, since the 1960s, and the Broadduses initially speculated that Michael was the behind the letters, though several police interviews with him didn't produce prosecutable evidence to support their suspicions.

And, while it's a nice touch that leads to some effective scares in the series, there's no mention of a dumbwaiter inside 657 Boulevard in the original article.

Mitch and Mo: Did neighbors actually watch the family from lawn chairs, and were they in a baby-eating blood cult?

Yes, but thankfully only the first part. Characters Mitch (Richard Kind) and Mo (Margo Martindale) balance effective comedic relief (there's nothing funnier than the latter calling her neighbors "motherf---ers" while standing at the Brannocks' fence with her husband in matching tracksuits) with genuine scares through their multi-episode arc on the show, and their actions are also based on those of real people.

Bill Woodward, the Broadduses' housepainter, reported that he saw the couple who lived behind 657 Boulevard sitting on a pair of lawn chairs facing the family's home.

"One day, I was looking out the window and I saw this older guy sitting in one of the chairs," Woodward told The Cut . "He wasn't facing his house — he was facing the Broadduses.'"

There is not, however, evidence to support that, as one character accuses, the real-life couple was ever involved in a satanic cult that killed babies to drink their blood.

Was Pearl's Westfield Preservation Society real?

Not quite, but there was a Westfield Planning Board, which facilitated complications for the Broadduses after the family announced a proposal to sell the property to a developer who'd split it into two separate lots for new homes. The Cut reported that 100 locals showed up to a Planning Board meeting in January 2017, though, unlike Pearl, their issue wasn't with butcher block countertops or 657 Boulevard's internal aesthetics.

The real-life gathering morphed into a three-hour hearing, with some neighbors expressing concern over everything from the threat of knocking down trees (hello, Pearl!) to voicing distaste over the thought of the new houses having displeasing front-facing garages. Abby Langford also spoke at the meeting, stressing that she'd "spent almost 60 years looking at a magnificent, beautiful house" and didn't "want to be looking out at a driveway."

What about Theodora Birch? Did a cancer-stricken private investigator assist in the search?

As fabulous as Noma Dumezweni is as Theodora Birch, sadly, the jazz-singer-turned-private-investigator who helps the Brannocks sniff the Watcher's trail appears to be a fictional icon. The Broadduses did hire a private investigator to snoop on their behalf, but The Cut 's piece makes no mention of said sleuth being a gorgeous British woman with impeccable taste in coats and gloves.

Surely, Jennifer Coolidge's pink-loving Westfield real estate agent, Karen, is an actual human being?

Nope. Country clubs and zero-dressing salads occupied no real space in the Broadduses story. But, you can soothe your soul by watching Karen call Nora a "c--t" in episode 7 — perhaps the best line delivery in the history of television — on a loop to get your fix for chaotic women.

Was the John Graff murder sequence inspired by a real story?

Shockingly, yes. After a mysterious man enters the Brannock home claiming to be a property inspector, Dean begins to suspect that the man is actually an on-the-run mass murderer who killed his entire family inside 657 Boulevard. Theodora's research uncovers that a past resident, John Graff, received menacing letters from the Watcher as well, which preceded a grisly crime that saw him shoot his wife in the back of the head before killing his mother on the second floor of the house. He then waited for his daughter to return home from school before shooting her, and ultimately traveled to his son's basketball game, drove him back to the house, and shot him when they walked through the door. Between the slayings, John calmly eats a sandwich and washes it down with a glass of milk.

It might seem like a fictional bloodbath concocted for TV, but John Graff was inspired by the real crimes of John List , who, on Nov. 9, 1971, killed his family in identical fashion. Like Graff, List similarly lost his job, and gradually bled out his mother's savings before killing her and his wife inside their house. He also ambushed two of his children when they returned home from school, and it's rumored that he made himself lunch between the killings, after which he reportedly traveled to his oldest son's soccer game and shot him later that night.

List went on the run, and wasn't captured until an episode of America's Most Wanted chronicled his crimes. A woman who saw the show told authorities she thought her neighbor , a churchgoing accountant named Robert Clark, looked like the image of List she'd seen on the show. Clark turned out to be List, who'd built a new life for himself in the Virginia suburbs. He was arrested in 1989 , convicted and sentenced to five life terms in prison. He died in 2008 as a result of complications from pneumonia.

The Watcher creatively weaves List's story into the central tale with some fabrications, as List — who murdered his family 33 years before the Broadduses purchased 657 Boulevard — was never directly involved in the letter incident, even though he killed his wife, mother, and children in the same New Jersey town.

The finale: Did they ever find the real Watcher, and what happened to the house?

Murphy's series finishes with a chilling title card noting that "The Watcher case remains unsolved." While the seven-episode show is a work of fiction loosely based on real events, that part is true. The person — or people — sending letters to the Broaddus family was never caught.

Derek and Maria Broaddus made a home elsewhere, and it took them five years to formally sell 657 Boulevard, though renters inhabited the space for some time. The house still stands, and the listing agent who eventually sold it to a young couple in 2019 for $959,000 (nearly $400,000 less than what the Broadduses paid for it in 2014) tells EW he had to overcome significant "stigma" attached to the house in order to find a new buyer.

"That was our biggest hurdle: Trying to get over that stigma. Plus, you had people riding by the house, taking pictures, walking up to the front door, it was crazy," David Barbosa, owner of David Realty Group, says, adding that he required potential purchasers to meet with an attorney to sign off on knowing the full history of the property before putting in an offer.

One man, whom Barbosa remembers confidently told him that he didn't "give a s---" about the hostile letters the Broadduses received, backed out after delving deeper into the case: "He went down to the attorney's office and called me and said, 'Yeah, I'm out.' He just said, 'Listen, after reading everything, there's no way I'm going in that house,'" Barbosa says with a laugh.

The series' final moments expand upon the last words of the Cut article; the show ends with Dean keeping tabs on his former home and lying about his whereabouts on a phone call with Nora, who's revealed — moments later — to be scoping out the neighborhood as well, while the article finishes with Derek admitting that the intrusive thoughts the Watcher conjured within him, even after they moved on from the house, felt "like cancer" every day. The piece ends with a quote from the fourth letter: "You are despised by the house. And The Watcher won" — both works pay tribute to this sentiment, albeit in different ways.

Check out our daily must-see picks — plus news, celeb interviews, trivia, and more — on EW's What to Watch podcast.

Related content:

• The true story behind Naomi Watts' new The Watcher series is legit nightmare fuel
• See photos from inside the real Watcher house that inspired Naomi Watts' horrifying TV show
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pop culture

'the watcher' netflix review: not your average haunted house.

While at this point, the events of The Watcher feel like just another good 'ole bizarre New Jersey tale similar to that of 13 Bumps Road and The Gates of Hell (thank you, Weird NJ , for fueling my childhood), this one actually has some definitive credibility to it.

But do I still believe that 13 witches were buried under a residential road in New Jersey and that when you drive over the road, you can feel the bump of each one's head? Most definitely (and yes, I did try it once).

The story behind The Watcher isn't just another old story that originated in the 1700s: this was real recent—2014 recent. Basically, the story is that a family bought a new house in Westfield, New Jersey, and immediately started receiving creepy, threatening letters from an unknown stalker named "The Watcher."

But while all of that did occur back in 2014, Ryan Murphy, of course, put his little (big) twist on the plot, making things quite a bit darker than they actually were in real life.

Though this is a standalone miniseries, unlike Murphy's usual proclivity for making everything into an anthology series, there is definitely a major American Horror Story vibe going on in The Watcher . Whether it's watching a baby being sacrificed to a group of red robe-wearing cult leaders or simply just seeing a person dressed in black staring at the house from the street, Murphy is at his finest and most comfortable within the confines of thrillers and horrors.

And while the main attractions of the series are the threatening letters and the overall creepy nature of the house and its surrounding neighbors, the slowly boiling conflict within the Brannock family itself takes on a life of its own almost as soon as they arrive at 657 Boulevard.

Listen, Naomi Watts puts on an incredible performance as Nora Brannock, but Bobby Cannavale practically steals the entire show in his portrayal of her husband, Dean, a man more concerned with outward appearances of perfection and wealth than his family's own safety and happiness. The pair also have two children, Ellie (Isabel Gravitt) and Carter (Luke David Blumm), who quickly become intermixed in the drama, as well.

We witness the downward transition of Dean's mental state as he becomes more and more entranced with the house and the person behind the threatening letters that just won't stop coming to his mailbox. But the conflict isn't just confined to the house itself.

Margo Martindale and Richard Kind play Maureen and Mitch, a married couple who lives just across the way from the Brannocks. Always donning matching outfits and unapologetically sitting in their lounge chairs with binoculars to spy on their new neighbors, it's no surprise that the pair is at the top of Dean's list of who could potentially be The Watcher.

Terry Kinney and Mia Farrow are the brother-sister duo of Jasper and Pearl Winslow, who also live extremely close to the Brannock's home. Pearl is her brother's mysterious mouthpiece, as Jasper is voluntarily mute and quickly makes his way to the top of Dean's list of potential Watchers as he's obsessed with 657 Boulevard.

Then, of course, we've got Karen Calhoun (Jennifer Coolidge), the odd realtor who's desperate to relist the Brannock's home after they start receiving the letters. For that reason alone, her true intentions become a little suspicious as she's beyond eager to get the Brannocks out of their new house.

Once the letters began, Dean hired Dakota (Henry Hunter Hall), a 19-year-old who runs his own security business and installs alarms and cameras all over the Brannock's home. But when other evidence comes to light, Dean moves Dakota to the top of his Watcher list, especially since he suspects that his daughter, Ellie, has struck up an intimate relationship with him.

In Dean's current mental state, practically anyone could be The Watcher.

In looking at the entire production, The Watcher is a solid installation in Ryan Murphy's ever-growing Rolodex of television shows: it's got everything that a successful series needs, after all. Though in that sense, it almost feels like a box that needed to be checked off from Murphy's angle.

Following the success of his recent, record-smashing hit show, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story , it's easy for Murphy to seem like a machine cranking out stories left and right. And while there is a depth to Cannavale's character in this series, it feels like something is missing in comparing The Watcher to other classic Ryan Murphy shows like American Horror Story: Asylum and American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson .

But then again, it's possible that we've just been totally spoiled by those shows that every other one in its wake is perpetually doomed to be compared to them.

All in all, The Watcher is a success across the board, though I would've liked to see a bit more depth and exploration of other characters aside from Dean. But every show can't be American Horror Story: Asylum , and perhaps I need to let go of that constant hope because musical numbers performed by patients in mental asylums just don't come along very often.

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• What To Watch Next?

The Watcher

Dean and nora brannock have just bought their dream home. unfortunately, a mysterious stalker and unfriendly neighbours don't want them there in the terrifying true story, the watcher..

Created by Ryan Murphy & Ian Brennan, The Watcher is their latest collaboration. Think along the lines of American Horror Story , and you have an idea of what you're in for.

The series is based on the true infamous story of the “Watcher” house in New Jersey.

What Is The Watcher About?

Nora (Naomi Watts) and Dean Brannock (Bobby Cannavale) have just purchased their suburban dream home in the idyllic Westfield, New Jersey.

After putting all of their savings into closing the deal, the family moves in, but they soon realise the neighbourhood is less than welcoming.

There’s a wacky older woman named Pearl (Mia Farrow) and her brother Jasper (Terry Kinney), who sneak into the Brannock’s house and hide in their dumbwaiter.

Then there’s Karen (Jennifer Coolidge), the real estate agent and an old friend of Nora’s, who makes them feel like they don’t really belong, encouraging them to sell up.

And if that wasn't enough, they must contend with nosy neighbours Mitch (Richard Kind) and Mo (Margo Martindale), who don’t seem to understand property lines.

Their icy welcome quickly turns into a full-blown living hell when ominous letters from someone calling themself “The Watcher” start arriving.

Terrorizing the Brannocks to their breaking point, the neighborhood’s sinister secrets come spilling out.

The Watcher Trailer

Is The Watcher Worth Watching?

In November 2018, New York Magazine published The Watcher. It chronicled the true story of a New Jersey family being stalked by a mysterious, threatening letter writer.

The Broaddus family bought their dream house, a six-bedroom home at 657 Boulevard and were doing some renovations before they moved in.

That's when they discovered a white envelope addressed to “The New Owner”.

It was the beginning of a nightmare with a mysterious stalker, strange neighbors and sinister threats.

So how did the whole story unfold?

Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan have done another incredible job of bringing this true story to life.

It is brilliant. Told over seven episodes, The Watcher will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. It is so creepy and so tense that at times, you just can't bare to see the Brannock family being tormented so mercilessly.

As always, the casting is totally on point. Naomi Watts, Bobby Cannavale, Jennifer Coolidge and Richard Kind are superb.

The production, the cinematography, and the whole vibe of The Watcher are perfect, and it is a limited series that is definitely worth watching.

But as good as The Watcher is, it is also a very loose re-telling of the original story.

A lot of the drama is fiction for the purpose of amping up the show, so while yes, there was ‘The Watcher', he/she has never been found and a lot of the events in the series did not happen.

The Watcher Release Date

Filming for The Watcher began in September 2021, wrapping in February 2022.

Netflix then announced that the limited series would be released on October 13th 2022.

The Watcher Netflix Main Cast Members

Naomi Watts ( The Impossible ) as Nora Brannock

Bobby Cannavale ( Nine Perfect Strangers ) as Dean Brannock

Mia Farrow as Pearl

Noma Dumezweni as Theodora

Joe Mantello

Richard Kind as Mitch

Terry Kinney as Jasper

Margo Martindale as Mo

Jennifer Coolidge ( The White Lotus ) as Karen Calhoun

Henry Hunter Hall

Luke David Blumm

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KE October 23, 2022, 7:16 pm

Utter nonsense! We have better things in this world to shine a spotlight on than Ken & Karen buying a house that’s beyond their means & very obviously fabricating nonsense to raise funds for the Next how they can barely afford. The young Black entrepreneur lusting over their daughter really takes the racial bias cake! What young person of color after jumping dozens of life’s to finally have something of their own would suddenly lose focus from a waif exiting the water ?! Netflix STOP IT. Get more than a sprinkling of people of color on your staff and DO BETTER!

Nrusso October 14, 2022, 12:38 pm

the only factual thing about this movie is the letter. everything else is false. Westfield does not have a lake!!

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The Watcher: A Short Review

I prefer horror way more than thrillers and usually skim over them. However I watched the preview they give when you highlight a show or film and this one caught my interest.

Overall I think it was a really great mystery/psychological thriller. The tension built through music and twisting character arcs was brilliant. I thought the acting was solid for the most part especially from those playing Dean and Theodora (she was my favourite.) And the show was genuinely unsettling in parts, so it did its job.

Now for the negatives, while few I do believe they stood out. I get the impression that there's multiple watchers but not having a concrete answer was unsatisfying in my opinion. Towards the last few episodes I'd say it gets a little convoluted with "oh he's the watcher, no she's the watcher, no they're the watchers." I can understand based on the true story, but felt too loose ended for such great build ups in the show.

Lastly, fuck Karen. I hate her (brilliant actress though.)

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Goyo’ on Netflix, an Unusual, and Charming, Argentinian May-December Romance

Where to stream:.

• Goyo (2024)

11 Best New Movies on Netflix: July 2024’s Freshest Films to Watch

Stream it or skip it: ‘when evil lurks’ on shudder, an innovative demonic-possession horror that just might be the scariest movie of 2023, stream it or skip it: ‘nada’ on hulu, about a man forced to change when his home situation goes south (oh, and robert de niro is in it, too), stream it or skip it: ‘the kingdom’ season 2 on netflix, where politics, faith, and power warp what’s right in argentina.

The subject matter can be tricky, but Goyo (now on Netflix) seems to handle its romance-with-a-person-on-the-autism-spectrum fairly well. This Argentinian drama from writer-director Marcos Carnevale stars Nicolas Furtado as a neurodivergent museum guide and painter who falls for a woman 20 years his senior, played by Nancy Duplaa. Tripwires abound, but the film pretty much avoids them, taking a gentle, sensible approach to an unusual romance. Which is to say, I wasn’t wholly convinced by it, but was charmed nonetheless.

GOYO : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Goyo (Furtado) holds his breath at the bottom of the pool. For a long time. So long, his coach bangs on the rail to rouse him to the surface. Is this symbolic? Has to be. Does Goyo feel like he’s drowning? Maybe – but that’s a bit extreme, a bit of a stretch. More likely, the scene, you know, metaphorizes his isolation. He has Asperger’s. He looks to be in his 30s. His mannerisms are stiff and he counts the stairs on the stairway and if he misses a step he goes back and resteps and recounts. He lives with his famous concert-pianist sister Saula (Soledad Villamil) in her posh home, and has a chef brother, Matute (Pablo Rago); they take care of him. Goyo has a deep appreciation for art, which makes him perfect for his job as a tour guide at the fine arts museum. He especially loves Van Gogh, and paints in a similar impressionistic style. 

On his way to work one rainy morning, Goyo spots Eva (Duplaa) across the street, fighting with her broken umbrella. She closes her eyes, exasperated, and tilts her head back ever so slightly as the rain patters her face. Goyo soon learns that she’s his co-worker, a new security guard at the museum. That evening, he’ll remember that shot of Eva in the rain and set up his canvas. Saula looks at his work and notes that it’s been a while since he’s painted – four years and seven months, he says, with exacting precision, as he brushes an outline of Eva’s face. 

Cut to Eva, who’s 50ish and, as we soon find out, muddling through a difficult transition. We follow her home from work, where she sees her sons Cuti (Balthazar Murillo), a teenager, and grade-schooler Tato (Zeus Milo); when her husband Miguel (Diego Alonso), fresh out of jail, comes to beg his way back into her good graces, she sends him packing. The next day, Goyo does the following of Eva home from work, down the museum steps, into the subway, onto the train. She sees him leering at her, but he doesn’t realize how creepy he comes off. She doesn’t see him moments later when he suddenly feels overwhelmed by the people and the sounds in the crowded train, and slumps to the ground, just barely maintaining his composure.

Goyo asks for advice from Matute, who suggests that Goyo should talk to Eva honestly, apologize, and explain how he didn’t mean to upset her. He does just that, and she’s a little bit charmed and flattered by his forthright, awkward manner. Better than that, she seems to understand his social challenges. After work, circumstance – train delays, sigh – puts her in an outdoor cafe across from Goyo, sharing a carafe of lemonade and some conversation. Goyo seems incapable of mincing his words or lying even a little bit, which is nice when he’s being complimentary, but a bit odd when he’s correcting your grammar. Eva rolls with it, though, and she pecks him on the cheek at the end of their impromptu “date” and Goyo goes home and lays in bed and scrolls through her Instagram and puts his hand down his pants. He’ll soon have an amusingly unvarnished conversation with Matute about erogenous zones. He’ll soon ask Eva to come over for dinner. When Saula is away. And that painting is just waiting to be discovered, isn’t it?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: There’s a few story beats similar to Hugh Dancy/Rose Byrne romance Adam . And be thankful Goyo is a far less ludicrous movie about a man with Asperger’s than Ben Affleck’s nutty cult-thriller The Accountant . (And between this, A Family Affair and The Idea of You , it seems like 2024 is the year of the older-woman/younger-man romance.)

Performance Worth Watching: Duplaa, a veteran of many Argentinian film and TV productions, is both alluring and complex in her portrayal of a woman who seems to understand that life – and people – can be messy and imperfect. Without such a strong performance, that simple, but poignant theme might not come through so clearly.

Memorable Dialogue: Goyo sometimes takes things very literally, e.g., during this frank discussion with his brother:

Matute: Has (Eva) got an ass? Goyo: Everybody does, Matute. Matute: I’m asking if she’s got a nice ass. Goyo: It’s harmonious.

Sex and Skin: Nothing beyond a soft PG-13.

Our Take: There’s enough nuance and sensitivity in Duplaa and Furtado’s performances to make this complicated, occasionally funny, occasionally touching romantic drama functional. Furtado’s portrayal of Goyo is matter-of-fact without being cloying, and Duplaa’s characterization is quietly underscored with trepidation, curiosity and earnest affection for this man. Eva is the film’s strongest dramatic force, and the screenplay wisely never overstates who she is or why she makes these decisions, instead letting Duplaa quietly embed the character’s kindness in her actions. Eva sees past the immediate dramatics of the situation to find the beauty in connection. She maybe has a lot to learn about Goyo, but she’s open to it, and never comes off condescending or pitying.

The subtle endearment Furtado and Duplaa foster occasionally seems under fire from Carnevale’s direction, which struggles with tonal inconsistency. He bookends the film with overwrought melodrama, using slo-mo as a grossly unsubtle means to emphasize emotion. While our leads find some natural chemistry during the film’s rock-solid middle hour – amidst some admittedly mawkish overtures, e.g., that painting – Carnevale seems to believe the story calls for soap-opera histrionics. If he’d step aside and let his actors bear the burden, Goyo might be a stronger film. As it is, it’s never unwatchable, occasionally funny without being forced, and generally tender and sweet. 

Our Call: Goyo will charm you if you let it. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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Pop Culture Happy Hour

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Why 'A Family Affair' works so well as a Netflix romcom

Linda Holmes

Nicole Kidman as Brooke Harwood and Zac Efron as Chris Cole in A Family Affair. Aaron Epstein/Netflix hide caption

About seven minutes into the new Netflix romantic comedy A Family Affair , Zac Efron, playing a conceited, not-too-bright movie star who's just broken up with his girlfriend, is whining to his assistant (played by Joey King) that she needs to pick up his stuff from the ex-girlfriend's place. He left treasured items there, he explains. He left his autographed Jordans! He left his Himalayan t-shirt! And then he says, gravely, as if it shows the urgency of the mission, "I left my copy of The Courage to be Disliked ." And I said, in my living room, "Ha!"

The Courage to be Disliked is a real book . It doesn't actually endorse the practice of being a jerk; it's more nuanced than that . But this character, without a pinch of self-awareness, bemoaning the disappearance of a book called The Courage to be Disliked ? That's a very solid joke, very solidly delivered by Efron. He follows it up with, "I have several underwears there. And people sell those."

What to watch this summer: Here are the TV shows we're looking forward to

Eventually, the movie star, whose name is Chris, has one too many fights with the assistant, whose name is Zara, and he has to go find her to make amends. But when he goes to her house, he finds her mother, Brooke (Nicole Kidman), a beautiful widowed author who lives in the kind of gorgeous and classy house that starred in most of the best Nancy Meyers movies . (It's sharply different from Chris' house, which is equally fancy but also ugly and impractical, as seen in an effective little bit about his absurd front door.) Brooke and Chris start drinking tequila, they hit it off, and Zara, who lives at home and observes few boundaries with her mom, eventually walks in on them upstairs in Brooke's bedroom.

Zara's dismay over her mother's relationship with Chris is not about the age difference (which goes mostly undiscussed), but about the fact that she's seen Chris go through his girlfriend-dumping routine enough times to fear that her mother might get hurt. What follows in the script from Carrie Solomon is one part romance between Chris and Brooke, one part ongoing clash between Chris and Zara, and one part mother-daughter story about Zara and Brooke. And honestly, in this film from director Richard LaGravenese, it all works pretty well!

Joey King as Zara Ford and Zac Efron as Chris Cole in A Family Affair. Tina Rowden/Netflix hide caption

Some of this — particularly an older woman getting involved with a younger male celebrity — may call to mind the recent movie The Idea of You , in which Anne Hathaway fell for a boy band member played by Nicholas Galitzine. I didn't care for that movie at all , in part because it wasn't funny enough, in part because the romance was unconvincing, and in part because the ending lacked emotional resonance. (It was based on a book with a completely different ending, and it turns out you can't just take a carefully built story and flip the ending on its head and have the result make sense.) That book wasn't written to be a romcom, but was adapted and wedged into the romcom box. This, on the other hand, is meant to be one — and it shows.

Movie Interviews

Zac efron on the physical demands of playing a wrestler in sean durkin's 'iron claw', nicole kidman went all in on becoming lucille ball for role in 'being the ricardos'.

Efron is a much more successful, charismatic, and (especially) funny lead than Galitzine (whom I'd liked in Red, White & Royal Blue ) opposite Hathaway in The Idea of You . And it's refreshing to see Kidman happily making out with somebody, at least temporarily making her way out of the haunted-sad-person rut she's been in for the past few years. Chris' relationship with Brooke feels real and brings out nice things in them both, beginning when she explains the Icarus myth so he can understand its connections to his movie franchise, Icarus Rush , which she's never seen. He certainly seems like a dope at first ("I'm Australian." "Oh, do you know Margot Robbie?" "...No." "I do."), but as he gets comfortable, he grows on Brooke, in addition to being, you know, very hot.

All the way back in 2012, I wrote that Efron was making an interesting play to follow in the footsteps of somebody like Ryan Gosling. (At that time, in his mid-twenties, Efron was appearing in a Nicholas Sparks film.) Gosling was also once a Disney kid, and he managed to grow into a very good dramatic actor, a very good comic actor, and a very swoony romantic lead. Efron doesn't have the Oscar nominations just yet, but he was excellent in a pure dramatic role in The Iron Claw in 2023, and he's funny enough here as the willfully goofy hunk that he might have been a pretty terrific Ken if Gosling hadn't been available — or a good Fall Guy .

Romantic Comedy Guide: Irish Wish, Anyone But You, Upgraded

King is an established Netflix romcom lead herself, but she does a very nice job here, too. Besides the romance, particularly welcome is the strand of the story about Zara figuring out that the world is not all about her, even in her relationship with her mother. In a scene with her grandmother, played (skillfully as ever) by Kathy Bates, Zara starts to figure out what we all eventually must: Your parents are not only your parents, they are also human beings with lives and thoughts and wants that have nothing to do with you. She has a truth-telling moment with her best friend (Liza Koshy), too, about her problems not lying at the center of the universe, which gives the whole last act a very nice "What if somebody had forcefully told Rory Gilmore to get over herself?" quality.

Nicole Kidman as Brooke Harwood in A Family Affair. Tina Rowden/Netflix hide caption

It's too early to declare some golden age of streaming romcoms, because the ones we get are still wildly uneven, and because on cable, it's not as if they ever went away. But there's some star power here, and some budget, and some writing and directing, that suggests interest in the genre is picking up steam and getting good results.

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Critic’s Pick

‘MaXXXine’ Review: Fame Monster

Mia Goth returns to Ti West’s horrorverse as an actress fleeing a mysterious stalker and a traumatic past.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

A psychosexual thriller imagined in blood red and cocaine white, “MaXXXine,” the third installment in Ti West’s nostalgia-soaked slasher saga, is part grungy homage to 1980s Hollywood and part sleazy feminist manifesto. Darker, moodier and altogether nastier than its predecessors — “X” (2022) and, later that same year, “Pearl” — this hyperconfident feature is also funny, occasionally wistful and deeply empathetic toward its damaged, driven heroine.

That would be Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), the sole survivor of the dirty-movie cast massacred in “X.” Now a successful porn star, Maxine, eager to break into mainstream movies, has relocated to a Hollywood of spectacular seediness. It is 1985 and, as in real life, a killer known as the Night Stalker is terrorizing the city, the so-called Moral Majority is hyperventilating on the sidelines and rock musicians are fighting accusations of satanic intent. In one pungent shot of Maxine’s boot grinding her cigarette stub into the silent film sex symbol Theda Bara’s star on the Walk of Fame, West underscores the transience of the celebrity status that Maxine so desperately seeks.

“I will not accept a life I do not deserve,” she declares, repeating the mantra taught by her father, a preacher seen in speckled, black-and-white flashback. Securing a role on a low-grade horror sequel brings her under the wing of its industry-toughened director (a perfect Elizabeth Debicki). Yet Maxine is constantly distracted: Her friends are dying, and two homicide detectives (Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan) want to question her; a Louisiana gumshoe (Kevin Bacon, a skeevy vision in crumpled suits and gold-capped incisors) keeps randomly accosting her; and a mysterious, black-gloved stalker haunts the film’s shadows. No wonder Maxine is plagued by panicked recollections of her traumatic past.

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• Cast & crew

Alien: Romulus

While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe. While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe. While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.

• Fede Alvarez
• Rodo Sayagues
• Dan O'Bannon
• Isabela Merced
• Cailee Spaeny
• Archie Renaux
• 1 Critic review

• Rain Carradine

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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia Director Fede Alvarez sought out special effects crew from Aliens (1986) to work on the creatures. Physical sets, practical creatures, and miniatures were used wherever possible to help ground later VFX work.
• Connections Featured in Nerdrotic: The Acolyte: Force is Female CONFIRMED? The Death of Theaters - The Real BBC @MauLer @HeelvsBabyface (2024)
• When will Alien: Romulus be released? Powered by Alexa
• August 16, 2024 (United States)
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Quái Vật Không Gian: Romulus
• Origo Studios, Budapest, Hungary
• 20th Century Studios
• Scott Free Productions
• Brandywine Productions
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