Gianluca Lasaracina’s Watchful Eyes is your standard found footage film—until it isn’t. Lasaracina, who co-wrote the script with Riccardo Silli and Filippo Tancredi, shows great respect for the first-person POV format. He understands how to build relationship dynamics, conflict, atmosphere, and mood that’ll tighten your skin. He uses reliable conventions to engage with the genre in an exciting, fresh way that neither takes jabs at his predecessors nor feels so tired that the big payoff in the finale isn’t well-earned. Watchful Eyes requires patience before the other shoe drops, and it’s worth waiting a few short minutes for Lasaracina to slap you across the face.
Sebastian, or Seb (Lorenzo Gioielli), wants to restart his life. A good friend hooks him up with a new job as a janitor at an exclusive school, which was the recent site of the brutal killing of the arts teacher. Five students, including Sofia (Luna Iansante), Emma (Mariacarla Casillo), Rebecca (Marta Porfiri), and Jayden (Gianluca Spagnoli), are required to be quarantined during the investigation and subsequent trial, as they were the last people to have contact with the slain professor. Seb will look after them for the week. The doors will be locked, and no one is allowed to enter or leave without the strict permission of De Angelis (Christian Iansante), who can only be reached by landline communication.
The days pass incrementally. Seb connects with several of the young students, namely Emma, who reminds him of his own daughter. Jayden is the jokester of the bunch and frequently butts heads with Seb. Cameraman Oliver (Filippo Tancredi) plays the voyeur, the objective party simply there to capture footage in the event something supernatural or otherwise comes out to wreak havoc. Watchful Eyes isn’t what you expect it to be. Throughout the film, it all feels wonky, a little off, and strange—as though something is shaking behind the stage curtain. Lasaracina dangles the proverbial carrot, so to speak, until you’re so hungry that you become trapped inside his cage.
When an indie filmmaker like Gianluca Lasaracina comes along, you stop in your tracks. He plays around in the found footage sandbox with reverence. There’s a familiarity that he wields like a torch, used to both light the way ahead and burn it to the ground. When the time is right, and only he knows when that is, Lasaracina invites you to partake in the haunting yourself. Amidst all the blundering scares, Watchful Eyes contains a much deeper conversation about grief, how we project what we think we need onto others, and society’s collective obsession with the paranormal.
Gianluca Lasaracina’s Watchful Eyes works as a good barometer for different kinds of found footage fiends. Some might get annoyed, while others will be utterly verklempt. It’s a delicate give and take. The expected and unexpected collide into a perfect example of the ingenuity of indie horror filmmaking.
Watchful Eyes is out now.
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