Someone’s Watching Me!

Someone’s Watching Me! casts Lauren Hutton as Leigh Michaels, a TV news producer who comes to the realization that she’s being stalked by an increasingly sinister figure. It’s clear immediately that the biggest hindrance to Someone’s Watching Me!‘s success is Hutton herself, as the actress delivers a painfully, obnoxiously over-the-top performance that remains a total distraction from start to finish – with the viewer’s efforts at connecting to her character’s plight, as a result, falling completely flat. There’s little doubt, then, that it’s John Carpenter’s stylish direction that prevents the picture from becoming an all-out bore, as the green filmmaker injects the overly-familiar proceedings with appreciative bursts of style and it’s clear immediately that Carpenter has been heavily influenced by Alfred Hitchcock’s body of work (the North by Northwest-like open credits, the Rear Window-esque storyline, etc, etc). And although the climax is admittedly better than one might’ve anticipated – it’s genuinely suspenseful and exciting – Someone’s Watching Me! proves to be such a tough slog for much of its brief running time that periodic highlights like that are essentially (and ultimately) rendered moot.

** out of ****