Reviews

It's hard to know where to start with the awfulness of The Watcher. It makes me rethink keeping my Netflix stock.

In short - it's a mess, a turkey, bad acting combined with awful unrealistic writing.

SPOILER BELOW!

Where to start with awfulness..

I grew up near Westfield, and this production was the first to claim that Westfield had a lake about the size of Barnegat Bay in southern NJ. The expansive vista shown when drinks are being taken on the shore simply isn't in Westfield. It's doubtful if it's in NJ. Was there any plot reason to add this to the series? None that I could see.

Did everyone have to be a potential "watcher" - about the only people in the production who weren't dragged across the stage like a big red herring were the two children. EVERYONE else was dragged across the stage as a possible suspect.

Conflating the List murders into the Watcher must have seemed like a stroke of genius to a writer or producer. BUT it was nothing but another red-herring. How about tunnels wandering around between houses - that happens all the time with the lame excuse of Prohibition. Or the claim that nothing was ever written or documented on the List murders taking place in the watcher house (they didn't..)

And we have Bobby Cannavale as Dean Brannock - miscast. His primary reaction to anything that happened in the plot was running around yelling and threatening people. As much as I love Naomi Watts, having her as Nora Brannock was a stroke of idiocy. She alternated between being a savvy smart woman to a totally gullible wife and friend to. Jennifer Coolidge playing rapacious greedy real-estate agent Karen Calhoun - and never recognizing that her old college chum was simply an awful person. And what was the deal with the huge coats that Karen Calhoun was garbed in for every scene - even summer scenes.

Don't waste your time. I watched the first episode and thought enough of this crappola, but somehow I ended up watching the second episode, and it became a challenge to watch them all to see just how bad the series could be. It was that bad and worse.

Sad.. really sad..

BTW - Jennifer Coolidge deserves a supporting actress Oscar for playing one of the most dislikeable characters I've ever seen in a production. And for doing it while wrapped in a huge winter coat all the time she was on screen. I really didn't like her by the end of the series.

Literally.

Went to an AMC theater with reclining seats and had trouble staying awake through the long monologues the characters were prone to.

The sign of a good movie with good acting is if you can feel something for the characters. In this case - the movie left me cold. None of the characters were worth giving a second thought to. The needless complexity of who did what when to whom - combined with the needless violence just made it worse.

>>>>>>>>>> SMALL SPOILER AHEAD <<<<<<<<<<<<

The numerous plot holes (how did the girl find Brad Pitt's character in London?) combined with mind numbing not very deep soliloquies at endless length left me with a "meh.. who cares.." I was relieved when it was over. The only performance worth watching is Cameron Diaz - even though she basically telegraphed it in - it was done as if she was winking at the audience the entire time. Brad Pitt walked through the entire movie mumbling his lines as he's been doing in way too many movies lately - I guess being part of BradJolina is getting expensive. It might be a good thing if he tried changing his appearance just a tiny bit in the different movies - the shaggy look is just getting old. Michael Fassbender's repeated looks of astonishment as what was predicted in the beginning becomes reality just became cloying and predictable.

I won't be watching for it on cable.

The seats in the AMC theater in Freehold NJ are quite comfortable. And there were a total of 6 people (probably sleeping) in the theater.

I can't imagine being scared by this movie.. and isn't that what "horror films" are about? You have two obnoxious children, a repressed governess (played by an actress who is much older then the character she plays)a gloomy house and a lot of dark photography with dramatic lighting.

That's about the whole story. The children are snotty bores, the governess I think was hitting the bottle when we weren't watching, the sweet old housekeeper has bugs in her bonnet, and the house only has 3 rooms that we see... despite it being as big as Windsor Castle.

I watched the entire thing - in the letterbox version - and kept hoping it would get better. It never did. It was almost a relief when the kid dies in the end, if he ever grew up he'd be intolerable. When the movie started out - it appeared it might be good - much to my disappointment it quickly deteriorated into a turgid senseless mess.

I know the fans are going to say this isn't a helpful review, but perhaps one or two people will be saved having to sit through this mess. Or not.. if you want to see a vastly overrated mess, have at it.. you can't say YOU WEREN'T WARNED! (Nurse is in the lobby with coffee to help you wake up if you fall asleep during the screening of this feature..)

I'd suggest you rent/Netflix/whatever the original "The Haunting" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057129/ one of several movies/miniseries about the same evil house.. THAT movie is genuinely scary and has two wonderful performances in it (Julie Harris and Claire Bloom..)

I rather enjoyed the comments of people who didn't like, or didn't "get" The Tesseract and acted irritated as if someone forced them to watch it.

From the introduction - the explanation of what a Tesseract is - and how it can devolve to simpler elements you know this will be a different movie. If you can't deal with a different type of movie - stick to the movies you like - the formula junk Hollywood cranks out.

How different was The Tesseract? Enough. Not over the top as other people have suggested if they'd opened their minds to it and not become judgemental. The flexible time-line takes a bit of getting used to and that's OK - I got to learn about the characters by while figuring out the time-line. Jumping ahead, backward and sideways? Yes - it does - but it works wonderfully well once you simply flow with it.

SPOILER..................... The essence of the movie *is* the simplification - the devolution of a Tesseract to a single-dimension item - a line if you will. All four major characters are as Saskia Reeves explained to Alexander Rendel "We are the same" - and in the end they were. Each was damaged in some way and destined for a bad end and in that the movie didn't disappoint at all.

Fate played out - leaving the question if one thing happened differently - what would the ending be?

I've got to watch it again. And not many movies get that treatment.

Only one reviewer "got it": ppmaker from Russian Federation

----------------SPOILER ALERT----------------------

It's worth watching the directors comments on his alternative endings to see what the ending he used means, and what the other endings he considered could have meant.

As PPMAKER said - did anything actually happen? The ending that was used leaves that rather wide open. The alternate endings leave you with other possibilities. Once you understand what the ending is telling you - those little nagging plot doubts you had during the movie are all resolved.

Great movie - enjoyed it greatly and enjoyed the soundtrack.