The Watcher: Movie Review (2000)

Directed by Joe Charbanic, written by Darcy Meyers, David Elliot, and Clay Ayers, 93 minutes, rated R.

(Editor's Note: Recently caught it on cable. Horrible. Went through the archives and found the original 2000 review.)

After seeing Joe Charbanic’s “The Watcher,” all I can say is this--it’s a good thing Keanu Reeves, its star, is busy filming back-to-back sequels of “The Matrix.”

After last month’s blowout bomb, “The Replacements,” and now with this embarrassing piece of serial killing hokum, the actor will soon be in desperate need of a hit to keep his appeal at the box office.

And how about that appeal? What is it, exactly, that keeps people coming back to a Keanu Reeves movie? The acting? Not likely--Reeves is to acting what Firestone has become to tires.

So maybe it’s his sterling elocution, in which each word in each of his films seems to have been painfully and thoughtfully worked out weeks before it rolls off his tongue and passes over his lips. Is there anything more annoying than the flat, emotionally dead way Reeves speaks? Oh, yes, of course--his acting.

But I digress.

“The Watcher” is the year’s third serial killer film, and it’s so bad, people will refer to it years from now after leaving other botched movies: “At least it wasn’t as bad as ‘The Watcher,’” they’ll say--and they’ll likely be right.

The film features Reeves as Griffin, a doughy-looking nutcase who baits an FBI agent named Campbell (James Spader) with a string of grisly murders culminating with an attack on Marsa Tomei, who plays Campbell’s psychologist. The emphasis here is on grisly, very grisly, which is all the film has since it doesn’t have a script in spite of the three MENSA candidates who penned its cliches, its contrivances, and its lame dialogue.

Imagine saying this to anyone with a straight face, as Reeves does: “We need each other, we define each, we’re yin and yang.” How about yin and yuck?

All of this, of course, makes one long for the satirical slashings of Mary Harron’s “American Psycho,” a film released earlier this year (and now on video) that actually had something to say. “The Watcher” has nothing to say, and it certainly isn’t entertainment. It’s a film that, on paper, may have seen stacked to score big at the box office, but when a film has only that in mind, more often than not it will bomb.

Grade: F