Time distorts in unsettling ways in our exclusive new clip from Gazer, the dark neo-noir thriller in the vein of Memento centered around a potentially unreliable narrator.

Metrograph Pictures releases the film in theaters on Friday, April 4, 2025.

The neo-noir thriller follows “a young mother (co-writer Ariella Mastroianni) who, due to a unique condition that progressively affects her perception of time, is trying to save money for her daughter’s future before it’s too late. She takes a risky job from a mysterious woman with a dark past, which leads her to become entangled in a tense web of revenge, deceit, and murder.”

Marcia Debonis, Renee Gagner, Jack Alberts, and Tommy Kang also star.

Watch the clip below that introduces Mastroianni’s character, Frankie, as she weighs her options when faced with a dubious proposal for fast cash. Whether to take the risky job is the least of her problems; startling visions signal murder ahead.

Ryan J. Sloan makes his directorial feature debut.

Daniel Kurland wrote in his review for BD, “In fact, the film feels like a very post-modern deconstruction of many of Alfred Hitchcock’s films, albeit with a more horror-centric slant. However, there are also traces of other polarizing character studies like Lee Chang-dong’s Burning, Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, or Chan Wook-park’s Decision to Leave. Gazer is about making sense of madness before said madness consumes the individual, and they’re too far gone to parse out what’s real. It’s a curious study in point-of-view storytelling and how to weaponize an unreliable narrator for maximum effect.”

Sloan and Mastroianni produced the shot-on-16mm feature. From the press release, “The film was shot on a shoestring budget over weekends in the spring and fall for two years while Sloan worked as an electrician and Mastroianni in film programming in New York.” Gazer is also described as “a fresh perspective on the legendary paranoia thrillers of the 70s and 80s, but also a masterful tribute to, and bold reinvention of, the work of many great cinema artists over several generations.”