Maika Monroe raised her profile significantly with what was arguably 2024’s most terrifying horror movie “Longlegs.” The film from director Osgood Perkins, who’s just now delivered the Stephen King adaptation “The Monkey,” was a modest sensation when it arrived last summer, propelled in part by a marketing campaign that did everything right to make “Longlegs” a hit. Though the film didn’t quite live up to the frankly unreasonable amount of hype this marketing campaign built, it was a big enough hit that it not only made distributor NEON feel like an emerging A24 rival worthy of the label, it introduced wider audiences to both Perkins and Monroe, both of whom had been toiling away for years before “Longlegs” captured the public’s attention.
In Monroe’s case, the Australian actress gained some notoriety for her role in 2014’s “It Follows,” one of the best horror movies of the 2000s — even if it didn’t quite stick the landing with its divisive ending. Since then, however, Monroe has struggled to break through, despite some decent turns in otherwise ok films. 2022’s “Watcher,” for example, saw her lead a slow-burn thriller that was, as /Film’s Chris Evangelista wrote in his review, short on actual thrills. The film from Chloe Okuno followed Monroe’s Julia, a young American woman who moves to Bucharest only to become increasingly unnerved by a voyeuristic neighbor in the apartment block opposite her new Romanian home.
Originally screened at Sundance 2022, “Watcher” hit theaters in the United States on June 3, of that year and earned positive reviews. With a reported budget of $5 million, IFC Films was likely hoping “Watcher” would make more than the $3.2 million it brought in at the box office, but that was actually a decent return for an independent film given a limited theatrical run on 764 U.S. screens. Still, more people surely should have been given the chance to see this otherwise overlooked psychological horror effort, which is why it’s good to see the movie finding an audience on streaming, where it has worked its way up the Netflix most-watched charts.
The Watcher becomes the watched on Netflix
“Watcher” might not have been a “Longlegs”-level hit, but it did enjoy quite a few successes. Alongside being nominated for the Grand Jury prize at Sundance, the film earned IFC Films its biggest opening weekend ever, according to Deadline. Now, U.S. audiences have been offered the chance to revisit the movie on Netflix, and it’s an offer they’ve apparently accepted in earnest.
“Watcher” hit Netflix on February 25, 2025, and has already proven to be a modest hit for the streamer. According to FlixPatrol, a site that tracks streaming viewership numbers across the various services, “Watcher” debuted at number three on the U.S. film chart on Netflix on February 26, and remained there the following day. The only other country where the film is available on Netflix is Iceland, where “Watcher” has also been charting recently, starting at number three on February 21 before falling to the eighth spot as of February 26, and dropping out of the charts altogether the following day.
While this might not be the global success enjoyed by something like Cameron Diaz’s first film in 11 years, “Back in Action,” which dominated the Netflix charts last month by taking the number one spot in 92 countries, “Watcher” is not a Netflix original, and therefore was not made available in all the streamer’s markets when it hit the service. As such, charting at number three the day after it hit Netflix is a pretty good outcome for the movie, which looks as though it might be able to stick around for a whole — that is if it can weather the competition.
Can Watcher remain at the top of the Netflix charts?
At the time of writing, the Netflix U.S. film charts are being dominated by Tom Hardy’s “Venom: The Last Dance,” which also hit the service on February 25, 2025, and immediately charted in the number one spot. Still. “Watcher” arguably accomplished the bigger feat, similarly debuting on the charts on February 26 at number three despite audiences being generally unfamiliar with the film. Even with its meager 40% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, “The Last Dance” is a $474 million blockbuster with a familiar Marvel character propelling its popularity. “Watcher,” meanwhile, is a little-known independent psychological horror movie that made less than its budget during a limited theatrical run in 2022. As such, number three on the Netflix charts is quite the accomplishment.
If Maika Monroe’s movie can maintain its spot, or even usurp Hardy’s superhero flick, it will be nothing short of a triumph. To do so, however, it will have to also dispatch the hilarious adventure “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” which is currently at number two in the U.S. That might be a tad trickier than taking on Venom, as that particular fantasy movie has a 91% RT score. Still, “Watcher” boasts an 88% score of its own, which is a heck of a lot better than the typical stuff we see surfacing at the top of these Netflix rankings — Kevin Hart’s “Lift” being just one example of many.
As such, “Watcher” may just surprise us all with its Netflix performance over the coming weeks. Critics liked the movie, it stars the lead from “Longlegs,” and it’s not Kevin Hart’s “Lift,” so it has a lot of things working in its favor.