“MONITOR” IS A DOWNRIGHT TERRIFYING TECHNO-HORROR THRILLER

SPOILER FREE

There are few jobs more psychologically brutal than content moderation. Someone has to watch the worst videos on the internet—the violence, the exploitation, the deeply disturbing clips that platforms scrub before the rest of us ever see them. Monitor, the eerie new supernatural thriller from directors Matt Black and Ryan Polly, takes that already bleak premise and asks a terrifying question: what if something in those videos starts watching back?

Brittany O’Grady stars as Maggie, an employee of “Moderation Services,” a company hired to scrub the internet clean before the rest of us log on. In other words, Maggie is a professional watcher of the worst things imaginable—violence, exploitation, the kind of disturbing footage platforms quietly remove so the public never has to see it.

Every day she takes an elevator down to a dim, windowless office where dreams go to die. And it’s hinted that Maggie chose this line of work because of a tragedy involving her sister, Victoria, giving her a personal reason to endure the psychological toll. But, as if reviewing clips of beheadings, dead dogs, and sexual crimes weren’t bad enough, Maggie eventually stumbles across a video unlike anything she’s seen before—one that seems to carry a terrifying curse. Or at least, that’s what she claims.

Black and Polly are smart enough to lean into the creeping dread of the premise before unleashing the film’s more overt horror. The early stretches of Monitor are all atmosphere: flickering screens, droning white noise, and the unsettling realization that these characters are spending eight hours a day staring into humanity’s worst impulses. It taps into a very modern anxiety—that the internet isn’t just chaotic or toxic, but possibly haunted.

O’Grady anchors the film with a grounded performance that keeps the story from tipping too far into genre chaos. Maggie isn’t a traditional horror heroine; she’s withdrawn, a little brittle, and clearly already carrying emotional baggage long before the nightmare begins. Watching her try to hold it together as reality begins to unravel gives the film a much-needed emotional center.

Visually, Monitor punches above its indie weight. Black and Polly make clever use of screens-within-screens, glitch effects, and bursts of grotesque imagery to suggest that the digital world is literally bleeding into reality. When the film goes for a scare, it doesn’t hold back—something the SXSW crowd responded to with plenty of gasps and nervous laughter. (This is what theaters are made for!)

The film’s mythology, however, is a little murkier. The rules governing its digital demon never quite solidify, leaving parts of the story feeling more like vibes than logic. Still, the premise is strong—and unsettling—enough that the film mostly gets away with it.

Because the truth is, Monitor is tapping into a fear that already exists. The internet is a place where disturbing content spreads faster than anyone can control it, and somewhere behind the scenes, real people are tasked with watching it first. By turning that uncomfortable reality into supernatural horror, Monitor becomes something more than just another tech-age jump scare movie. It’s a reminder that the scariest thing about the internet might not be what we post—but what we refuse to look at. And in Monitor, someone is always looking.