It’s officially time to apologize for something heinous I said years ago. I’ve grown and learned from my mistakes. Out of all the film genres, horror has been known to fall into phases. Post 9/11, the horror genre saw an influx of angry slasher films, like The Hills Have Eyes, the Friday the 13th remake, and a rise in zombie films. The xenophobic fear felt by countries all around the world propelled these types of films into horror’s zeitgeist. Around the mid-aughts, the genre would make a hard transition into an overabundance of low-budget found footage films.
While there may or may not have been political or social reasons behind this shift, I thought it would just be a phase. It’s not. Many times, I’ve gone on record, saying found footage will hit a plateau and the subgenre will die out. But with films like The Outwaters, Malibu Horror Story, Horror in the High Desert, Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire, The Ceremony is About To Begin, Frogman, and Hell House LLC Origins: The Charmichael Manor, it’s clear I was wrong. So what was it that finally flipped the switch in my head? What was the film that made me realize I couldn’t have been more wrong?
What was the film that made me realize I’m living in the midst of found footage’s second (or third) wave? Who’s Watching.
Who’s Watching follows Caleb (Zachary Ray Sherman), a weird, creepy, and downright off-putting, self-obsessed loner. Caleb finds himself creating a “documentary” at his uncle’s business. The “documentary” quickly reveals itself to be centered around his coworker Krista (Gracie Gillam), turning from oddly quirky to insidiously dangerous. The narration around Caleb’s film gets murky when one of his band’s friends, Tawnia (Olivia Luccardi), enters the picture. Who is filming who? And who, exactly, is watching?
Writer/director Tim Kasher is one hell of a filmmaker. I had no clue he was the composer of the brilliant film My Suicide (aka Archie’s Final Project) which stars Zachary Ray Sherman. When the film was introduced, I found out just how much people love Kasher. His band Cursive was mentioned, and the house went wild. Kasher is an astounding composer, musician, and filmmaker—a real triple threat. Who’s Watching is Kasher’s sophomore feature, and it’s a gorgeous blend of found footage and traditional filmmaking. It’s one of the few times a found footage film answers the question of how the film we’re watching was edited (with music, titles, etc.).
When it comes to found footage/POV filmmaking, the lead characters, or at least those with most of the screen time, must succeed for the film to work. The most frustrating FF/POV films are those with constantly peaked audio and actors who think loud and annoying is an acting choice. Luckily for Kasher, he struck gold with his three leads.
Zachary Ray Sherman excels as a red-pilled 4Chan incel. Even though Sherman is handsome in the real world, his behind-the-dollar-store haircut and general unpleasantness craft the character of Caleb into a truly terrifying antagonist. What’s most disheartening about his performance is its raw authenticity. Even when his character acts in a way that seems over the top, it’s unfortunately not too far off from something you’d see in a YouTube true crime breakdown video. The character of Caleb was etched into my brain long after the credits rolled. It left me looking over my shoulder while waiting for the L train to arrive.
Gracie Gillam is just a pure joy to watch. From her start in 2011’s Fright Night, to a stint on Vampire Diaries, all the way through the highly underappreciated Z Nation, Gillam has made quite a name for herself in the horror scene. Who’s Watching is another stellar mark in her glowing oeuvre. She plays the damsel in distress incredibly well and absolutely makes the finale her bitch.
Olivia Luccardi is the epitome of the “good for her” trope. Like Gillam, Luccardi is no stranger to horror as she played Yara in It Follows (you know, the person with the clamshell eReader!). There’s a real slow burn for Tawnia, she’s naturally unassuming until you realize what’s actually going on. Let’s just say, there’s a twist in the film that had nearly the entire theater gasping.
It’s clear that Kasher had a distinct vision with Who’s Watching, and that vision is horrific. During the Q&A after the film, Luccardi revealed that while they were told what to film, they were allowed to make the shooting scenes their own. And, to me, that’s what makes Who’s Watching such an impressive feature. Allowing your actors to exist within their characters and let them film what they think needs to be filmed, or what they think they would notice if they were in this predicament, which adds another level of credence to this film.
Found footage and POV films rarely have deep characters and character development. Who’s Watching is a film that knows what it is, what it needs to be, and what story is necessary to tell at certain points. From the deep character developments to the astounding visual choices, this film is one that you will not forget for a long time. I have no clue if Tim Kasher and Joel Potrykus know each other, but their styles are strikingly similar while still existing within their own unique and artistic worlds. If the two of them got together and made an anthology film, I think the world would implode.
You’ve never seen a found footage film like Who’s Watching. The only question you have to ask yourself as you leave the theater is, “How’d you like that fucking movie?”