Jo Jo (Thomas Lim) returns to his apartment block, and after negotiating the stairs when the lift doesn't work, he is home. But where is his flatmate? His glasses are on the floor by his laptop, and when Jo Jo enters the bathroom he finds the sink full of blood and matted hair. What he doesn't see when he leaves the bathroom is the hair gradually rising as if someone - something - were emerging. He then goes over to the window, using his phone to call the flatmate to find out where he is, although casually glancing at the ground far below gives him his answer: the flatmate is lying dead there. What could have forced him to commit suicide? Could it have been the attachment he had been watching on his computer? An attachment that is being sent around the world?
Watch Me was an ultra-low budget horror from writer and director Melanie Ansley and writer, producer and actor Sam Voutas, and the influence of Asian shockers was obvious from the opening. There's not only a pre-credits sequence but a post-pre-credits sequence, just in case we hadn't got the idea that there's a deadly and supernatural form of computer virus going about. This sees a man opening the "Watch Me" clip, which seems to be a variation on that potent old urban legend the snuff movie, and then being menaced by a redhaired woman whose appearance spells his imminent doom. But the false starts don't end there, as we follow the story of cinema studies student Jill (Katrina J. Kiely) and her latest project.
Although shot on video rather than film as many of these glossy horrors are, this film works up its own atmosphere of dread, mainly thanks to the cramped camera style that makes for a claustrophobic air - there are hardly any establishing shots, for example. Jill's thesis is on voyeurism, and for some reason she thinks the best way to find out about her subject is to watch pornography, so she has ventured round to the business of sleazy purveyor of such DVDs, Taku (Voutas). He rents her three titles, his choice because Jill doesn't know what she's looking for, and off she goes back to her flatmate Tess (Frances Marrington) who is studying the same project.
However, it's not the DVDs that prove Jill's downfall, it's the attachment someone has sent her via e-mail. There's a danger of this getting repetitive, with one character after another viewing the footage (which we never see, only hear snatches of) and encountering the redhaired ghost, but Watch Me is short enough not to wear you down. So it's Tess who eventually becomes our heroine, as she finds Jill's body (her eyes have been sewn shut) and is now a murder suspect. Bizarrely, the investigating detectives ask her to view the clip with them, straining credibilty somewhat, but a phone call from her mother saves Tess. Not that she'll have that luxury later on... The filmmakers know their genre, and have crafted professionalism with little money, so if you don't mind the cheapness their opus isn't bad at all, a little one note perhaps, but horror fans will find a lot to enjoy here. Music by Huf, Jericho and Preuss.
