Hoping to make the festival rounds this year, check out the first trailer for the UK micro-indie The Watcher Self, made entirely with personal finance from debut writer and director Matt Cruse, who plunges us directly into the unsettling world of a woman balancing on the edge of sanity. “Karen French’s intense, visceral performance as the haunted Cora makes The Watcher Self a complex, deeply chilling and unforgettable watch,” say the press release.
The film was shot and completed in London, and is the first feature outing for many of its cast and crew.
“The Watcher Self is a deeply unsettling psychosexual chiller written and directed by Matt Cruse about one woman’s descent into hell. Cora (Karen French) begins her day facing the consequences of a nightmare. Struggling to maintain a normal routine, she engages in a series of emotionally detached encounters and experiences a confusing psychological connection with the strange and elusive Van (Julian Shaw). Then echoes from the past threaten to derail her tenuous state of mind, and Cora becomes increasingly dislocated from her surroundings. Is she going insane, or is it something else?
The Watcher Self is about what remains when the layers of sanity are gradually stripped away… and what may or may not be real.“