he Watcher is based on a genuinely disturbing real life story that was published in New York Magazine in 2018. Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan have, however, tweaked the actual story to create a thriller that uses a few bits and pieces of truth while fictionalising it extensively.

The actual tale involved the Broaddus family who had bought their ideal home in New Jersey only to be haunted by creepy, unsettling letters from a stalker who claimed to have strong ties to the house. They kept receiving letters from The Watcher but never moved in. They reportedly lost money selling the home and instead moved to a smaller one in the affluent Union County town. The case has remained unsolved to this day. There is all that going on in Netflix’s The Watcher as well, but rather than delving deep into the fear of the enigmatic and persistent figure, the show rather quickly descends into a silly wild goose chase.

Dean Brannock, the businessman husband of Naomi Watts’, a ceramics artist, is played by Bobby Cannavale, who leads the cast. They have two children Carter (Luke David Blumm), who gets little to no screen time, and Ellie (Isabel Gravitt), a teenager whose developing sexuality transforms Dean into a complete lunatic.

The arrival of threatening, hand-written letters comes as soon as the family settles into 657 Boulevard, pouring every last penny they have into the purchase of the house. As opposed to the original story, the plot features many extraneous elements, such as hidden tunnels, Satanic Panic plot cues and a ghost. Given the amount of needless fictionalisation piled on top of the original tale and turning it into a drama, you will constantly question whether the show is actually based on a true story as you watch it. The fictionalization has robbed the plot of everything that made it genuinely intriguing in the first place.

The characters grow more and more paranoid as the plot develops. You cannot blame them for losing their heads at a certain point during the series though. If you think too hard about who is behind their misery, you could quite possibly lose yours as well. Although it is all entertaining, the mystery aspect of the show can certainly be annoying. It is not exactly easy to create a mystery that captivates and engages the audience, but the show may have erred by going over the top in this regard.

A continually changing cast of odd suspects is what the series is mostly about. Throughout the show, Dean keeps blaming one person after another while he is not sure whether The Watcher is one pair of peculiar and off-putting neighbors (Terry Kinney and Mia Farrow) or another (Richard Kind and Margo Martindale). The cop (Christopher McDonald), the real estate agent (Jennifer Coolidge), the private detective (Noma Dumezweni) or one of a few other wicked rogues who stray through their life in the seven episodes of the show could potentially be the culprit. All of them are shown to be watching something, and we must spend the next six episodes figuring out who is watching whom and why.

The characters grow more and more paranoid as the plot develops. You cannot blame them for losing their heads at a certain point during the series though. If you think too hard about who is behind their misery, you could quite possibly lose yours as well. Although it is all entertaining, the mystery aspect of the show can be annoying. It is not exactly easy to create a mystery that captivates and engages the audience, but the show may have erred by going over the top in this regard.

Unlike traditional mystery-thrillers, The Watcher does not draw any concrete conclusions. When it comes to the theme, there are a few intriguing possibilities, but none are explored. It is filled with rather clichéd talking points that do not actually fit with the situation in which the characters find themselves.

Since the show fictionalised itself so much, it had the opportunity to pull off a fun twist to reveal who The Watcher in fact was. Ultimately, however, the series goes on to deliver a ridiculous fake-out climax, where the PI they hired claims to have been behind it all, a story that is completely inconsistent and immediately disproven when she dies. Like the original narrative, It comes to a close with the identity of The Watcher still a mystery. This may be acceptable for a more stern interpretation of the story, but not in this vapid, dramatised one. The burning questions we have will never be answered. What is the truth? Would we ever be able to figure out who The Watcher is? Could it have been Dean all along?

Let’s be frank, to sit through seven episodes of a horror mystery-thriller only to get a completely unsatisfactory conclusion is not really a fun journey. It is quite infuriating how they have kept the story’s original lack of a conclusion while introducing a few extra characters and drama with no discernible enrichment to the plot. Perhaps there is only one saving grace in the series: its cast. A film version of The Watcher would have been better than a seven-episode series. You may want to skip this one unless you are a fervid fan of Murphy’s works.

The writer is a freelance contributor