Opinion| The Watcher: How a stalker’s obsession tears down a family

In a whodunit, everybody looks for the killer. In a whydunit, everybody looks for the motive. In the latest Netflix series, The Watcher, everybody’s heartbroken. Well, not everybody – it’s the four members that make up a family. Nora (Naomi Watts) and Dean (Bobby Cannavale), the wife and husband, are terrified, as well, as they run from pillar to post to catch the person that keeps sending them threatening letters. The show feels like a classic thriller from a distance. But since it’s based on a true story, I was torn between calculating the stalker’s next move and consoling the couple.

The Watcher, created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, goes on many bewildering rides simultaneously. If the stalker sends a letter stating that greed has brought the family to 657 Boulevard (a mansion in Westfield, New Jersey) in one scene, in another, a realtor urges Nora to sell it. The realtor, Karen (Jennifer Coolidge), obviously, has a motive – she wants to step in and make as much money as possible. However, she’s not the only character with a clear-cut sinister plan. Almost all the supporting characters seem to have them. The neighbors – an aging couple in one house and kooky siblings in the second – are also not friendly.

All the mansions in that particular neighborhood look regal. The people who live there definitely belong to the upper rungs of society. But there’s no bonhomie between them. It’s not that Dean and Nora aren’t interested in the idea of getting to know their neighbors; they don’t get the sense that they’re being welcomed with open arms. Pearl (Mia Farrow), one of the siblings, loudly expresses her dissatisfaction every time Dean announces that he’s going to renovate his house. Why should Pearl have a say in what goes on behind the doors that don’t belong to her?

Marriage Troubles

A sizeable chunk of The Watcher deals with the cracks that open up between the central couple. It’s understandable because they can’t go to bed without worrying about the shadow of danger. The cops say that they do not have the required pieces to put the puzzle together and refuse to help them beyond a certain point. It can be argued that it’s their job to hunt for clues and come up with a solution, but they aren’t willing to stretch their arms more than necessary.

And as the letters get scarier, Nora takes her kids to a nearby motel to spend the nights, while Dean stays back in order to take care of the house. But how can he fight against an invisible villain? Moreover, this is the house that they poured all of their savings into, and now they’re watching it gently slip away from their hands. And, perhaps, Dean is of the opinion that he should be the one to drag the culprit through the mud, as he’s the man of the house.

His face, in the later episodes, grows smaller, and his bottled-up anger restricts him from carrying out day-to-day activities. Nora also suffers a similar fate, but she considers selling the house and putting a full stop to their problems. Cannavale and Watts, in many scenes, play their parts as though they’re starring in a locked-room mystery, which is probably the place that The Watcher wishes to occupy. Watts, especially, is brilliant as the wife who doesn’t know whether to trust her husband, or do some digging on her own.

There’s something juicy about a true crime series in which the needle of suspicion moves from one character to the next. The perpetrator could be anybody – a person who has known the family for a long time, or an outsider whose only goal is to drive the family away. It could also be a bunch of people working on a collective mission. The combinations are endless. What makes The Watcher a befuddling show, though, is that it doesn’t reveal the desires of the stalker.

But the stalker is definitely not a ghost. The possibility of a formless character pulling these elaborate pranks can be ruled out. I don’t think typewritten letters will be its mode of communication. And even though a guy, unrelated to the actual residents of 657 Boulevard, lives in a tunnel attached to the basement, the series portrays him as one of the baddies and not as the mastermind. Perhaps, the most shocking twist occurs when a woman shows up all of a sudden in the bedroom, while Dean is asleep and Nora is away.

The article by Reeves Wiedeman in New York magazine, from which this incident is borrowed, is fascinating because it talks about the slow and painful death of the American dream. And The Watcher, in trying to capture the essence of that anxiety, does justice to the genre of home invasions by keeping the stalker in the background.

Karthik Keramalu is a writer. His works have been published in The Bombay Review, The Quint, Deccan Herald and Film Companion, among others. 

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