Chris Miller
What began as a question about the future possibilities of found-footage filmmaking ultimately became Dark Sky Films’ Who’s Watching, a psychological horror film that uses shifting perspectives and surveillance to explore how differently a person can appear depending on who is behind the camera. Writer-director Tim Kasher first conceived the script in 2010, during a time when “found footage fatigue” was becoming a common industry talking point, and spent the years that followed reworking the story and exploring new ways to push the format.
The official synopsis for Who’s Watching reads: Eccentric musician and aspiring filmmaker Caleb becomes obsessed with his new coworker, Krista, secretly documenting every aspect of her life in an effort to make her the subject of his latest film. As Caleb’s fixation intensifies, the lines between observer and participant begin to blur, pulling him deeper into a dangerous spiral of surveillance, manipulation, and obsession. As the cameras keep rolling, the question becomes increasingly unsettling: who is really watching who?
Speaking with Film Obsessive’s Chris Miller, Kasher discusses the film’s unconventional use of perspective, the creative possibilities horror offers him as a filmmaker, and why making Caleb feel frighteningly human was so important to the story.
Find out where you can watch Who’s Watching here. The soundtrack for the film will be available October 23, 2026 via 15 Passenger Records.
Film Obsessive: First off, where did the idea for Who’s Watching come from?
Tim Kasher: I first came up with this script idea back in 2010 when the industry was writing articles about ‘Found Footage Fatigue’. It got me thinking about what had NOT been explored in the found footage realm which brought me to these ideas of mixing narrative forms and perspectives. I scoured through found footage style movies and couldn’t find anything that was telling this story in the fashion I wanted to tell it. So, the initial thoughts weren’t about stalkers or really any of these characters, but rather, just about the technical side of storytelling and how found footage could be further played with.
Who’s Watching plays with the idea of perspective in a very literal way. How did you approach making each point of view feel distinct while still ensuring the overall film felt cohesive?
Great question. Our DP, Brian Sowell, helped a lot with how we ultimately got different feels for the different perspectives. He used a few different cameras and different lenses as well, including an anamorphic lens for scenes we dubbed, ‘omniscient’. But the actors played differently depending on which perspective we were in, and that helped the overall believability as well.
Were there any rules you and editor Brian Sowell—or your post-production team—established about when the film could shift perspectives and when it needed to remain grounded in a particular character’s point of view?
Lots of rules!! For this movie, it was really important for me to stay extremely reverent as to WHO is telling the story at any given time. The perspective we were in would dictate how it was lit, what camera we used, and how the actors were portrayed. I know this can come off a bit vague; this is a difficult film to talk about without spoilers! But yes, we were big rule followers during this production, including all the rules that should be followed when shooting a documentary, which was also essential for this story.
How did you work with Zachary Ray Sherman and the rest of the cast to navigate a film where performance is sometimes filtered through cameras, surveillance footage, and different cinematic perspectives?
We would talk about these different perspectives and how a certain point of view would likely affect how a certain character might act. That was important during the shoot, but of course there’s a lot more playful manipulation that can be drawn from in post. It was really enjoyable showing Caleb from his own perspective, but wayyyy more fun to show who he REALLY was when caught in other people’s perspectives. Who’s Watching??
Were there any major discoveries you made about the story in the editing room that weren’t apparent on the page?
Oh absolutely. The biggest mistake I made in this production was the massive amount of script I shot that we ended up not using. That is incredibly expensive and taxing, especially on such a low budget. There were directions this movie went in that we realized weren’t essential once we had it in the editing room. We wanted to keep this movie very tight and also very short. It feels like the type of story that shouldn’t be dragged out.
We heard the script has been with you in some form since 2010. How did Who’s Watching evolve over those years, and were there ideas from the original draft that you were determined to preserve?
It changed in so many ways, many of those versions never saw the light of day. The first draft of the script was A LOT darker and felt a lot more like a Michael Haneke film, which was very much who I had in mind while working on this. Through various rewrites we were able to open up the script, make the characters more real and also create some of the best reveals that I simply cannot talk about here but trust that they work pretty well!
What does horror allow you to explore as a storyteller that you don’t think another genre would allow in quite the same way?
Hmmm… horror is a great realm for allegory, isn’t it. Horror is more often about something else, a metaphor for some awful societal woe or our personal angst and longing. That makes horror storytelling loads of fun while still making important statements about the world around us. It’s easier to tell fantastical stories in the horror genre, you can really stretch out into some wild ideas that you can’t pull off as well in more grounded genres such as comedy or drama.
What do you hope audiences are thinking about—or perhaps questioning—after the credits roll on Who’s Watching?
I hope they are asking themselves why they feel so much empathy for Caleb, when he’s clearly such a rotten character! We did a lot of work toward humanizing our antagonist, a playful manipulation, but also I wanted him to be human because I think that’s so much scarier. The more he feels like a coworker of yours, the more this story works.
Looking back at the finished film, what is something you learned as a filmmaker that you know you’ll carry into your next project?
Wow, so many things, I’m sure. Always learning. A big thing I continue to learn is how every shot is an opportunity to show/tell something incredible, that you shouldn’t treat any part of a film as merely getting from point A to point B. Every shot is expensive and every shot can be critical. And fill those shots with great production design! Surround yourself with amazing talent!
After experiencing the challenges and adrenaline of making an independent feature, what kinds of stories are you eager to tackle next?
I have so many scripts! What would you like to see next? I have a comedy I’m developing and also a werewolf script I’m terribly excited about. Thanks!
