Marketing this film as a Blumhouse-style found-footage horror does this genuinely interesting and experimental lockdown effort a bit of a disservice. Conceived during Covid times by Jacob Estes (responsible for the excellent 2004 teen drama Mean Creek) and his children Iris and Lucas, the horror elements are more sweetly vindictive than scary. The film is best described as a kind of pseudo-stalker-flick-cum-Freudian-video-diary-cum-dressing-up-box-raid, with Blair Witch and Lynchian overtones, and a meta fascination in the film-making eye, couched in the shut-in mania of 2020. Just run with it.
Iris (Iris Serena Estes) and Lucas (Lucas Steel Estes) find themselves home alone during a mysterious pandemic that affects adults; they are only in technological contact with their hospitalised parents. Being the children of a film-maker and a musician, a pandemic of creativity also runs amok in this household. When teenager Iris isn’t looking after her needy brother, she is painting and vlogging, while he precociously knocks out Clair de Lune on the keyboard. But when ritualistic arrangements of objects begin appearing in the hallway, then clips from a prowler’s point of view show up in her camera roll, she accuses Lucas of taking the DIY projects too far.
Modern vlog, Paranormal Activity nocturnal, high-saturated nostalgia, frosted-negative transitions: Estes taps every register in the film’s own artistic spree. But there’s a dark side to it too. Early on Iris finds a note from her father pretending he keeps watch over them as the “Closet Creeper”, implying that the anonymous presence in the videos could be the parental gaze. Or, like a YA version of Peeping Tom or Lost Highway, the forward-grasping compulsion of the film-making urge itself. Maybe all creativity is cursed, as a demonologist explains later on: “The demon prefers novel and personalised approaches to summoning. Those who create their own ritual with pure and true belief are often the most corruptible.”
He’s Watching gets a bit listless and repetitive two-thirds in, then rallies as the kids try to decipher the object stashes and exorcise this invader. What this stir-crazy, cheeky and wise family album tells us is that true horror for self-authoring, first-person Generation Z seems to be the hectoring dictates of the boring old third person.
• He’s Watching is available on digital platforms on 17 October.
