When Watcher hit Netflix in early 2025, a new wave of viewers discovered why the film has such a stubborn, stomach-dropping hold: it’s less about a clever whodunit than the slow grind of not being believed.
Maika Monroe plays Julia, an American expat in Bucharest who becomes convinced the man watching her from a nearby building is dangerous—at the same time local headlines warn of a suspect dubbed “the Spider.” As Julia’s concerns are dismissed by the men around her, the movie steadily tightens into a finale that’s brutal, direct, and (importantly) not especially interested in shocking you.
Who is the Spider?
The Spider is Daniel, the same man Julia has been clocking across the way—played by Burn Gorman. The film confirms what Julia has been insisting all along: the watcher is also the culprit.
As Entertainment Weekly puts it plainly, “the simple answer” is Daniel, and the climactic confrontation ends with Julia surviving the attack and stopping him—proof that her instincts were right even when everyone treated them like paranoia.
Why the “twist” isn’t that shocking
The reveal lands as something closer to grim inevitability than a gotcha, and that’s by design. Okuno has addressed criticism that the ending is too straightforward, saying the point is precisely that Julia keeps saying “it’s this guy,” nobody believes her, and then “it’s the guy”—“the twist is sort of that there is no twist.”
In other words, the movie’s real punch isn’t who the Spider is; it’s what it costs Julia to be dismissed until the danger becomes undeniable. That’s why the final beat doesn’t linger on Daniel’s death so much as Julia’s cold, withering look toward her husband—an emotional payoff that underlines the film’s central idea about how routinely women’s fear is minimized.
