Halloween is arriving, so it’s that time of year to watch one of the spookiest shows/movies known to mankind. Luckily, Netflix released a new drama called, “The Watcher.” If you’re unfamiliar with the tale, “The Watcher” is an anonymous person who sends letters to the house addressing the owners, Derek and Maria Broaddus. At first, the letters start out innocently by welcoming the family to the neighborhood, but it quickly turns dark. They receive letters regarding their children and what personal belongings have been brought into the house.

Like every Netflix true story, some of the details are loosely based. However, it just adds some spice to the show.

When encountering the show, I was already intrigued, but it wasn’t until I saw the trailer that I realized I needed to watch it. The trailer starts off with “The Watcher’s” voice and them reading a letter but of course, it’s anonymous so instead of seeing who wrote the letter, we get a voice-over along with the reaction of the house owner. In the first episode, you can already get the vibe that something is off. When Dean and Nora Brannock (played by Bobby Cannavale and Naomi Watts) visit an open house with their family, you can clearly see someone from the window staring at them from the 2nd floor. Not only that, but the neighbors already seem off from the start. You can clearly tell this is going to be one of those shows where everyone is suspicious, so I wasn’t really that eager to keep watching. However, things turned around for the better.

Although the show does have the typical everyone is a murderer type scenario, it was really interesting to see what issues each of the neighbors had. Also, it made you feel as if you were solving this case by trying to figure out who “The Watcher” was. The only thing I didn’t like though was at the end, the show never explained what “The Watcher” meant by “do you know what lies within the walls of 657 Boulevard,” and they never explained the reasoning why certain characters would appear at the Brannocks’ house.

As for the plot itself, it definitely went along with the real story, apart from those twists here and there. In the show, they showed how the police were of no help to Brannocks, except for finding DNA and gender. However, in real life, the police were a bit more helpful to the Broadduses in finding who “The Watcher” could be. The show also portrayed how suspicious the Brannocks family was of their neighbors, which compares to the real story. Their main suspect was their next-door neighbor who was described as odd, and in the show, we can immediately tell that there is something off about his neighbor. Also, the show does a great job of focusing on minor details just like that old couple sitting in lawn chairs facing the Brannocks’ house. Although in real life, it was the painter of the Broaddus family that noticed odd behavior from the neighbors directly behind the home as well as the lawn chairs they kept in close proximity to the Broadduses’ property. Last but not least, the show mentioned one of the main suspects who worked as a high school English teacher two towns over from Westfield which is exactly like the true story, except the one in real life, actually grew up in the wealthy part of the New Jersey town, unlike the show where he was in poverty.

Overall, I think this show did an amazing job of incorporating real moments but also exaggerating them a bit for the viewers. I would give this show a 8.5/10 because some plots were confusing but in all, they did an amazing job of capturing the Broadduses’ suspicions regarding potential suspects.