The Watcher

Starring Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale as Nora and Dean Brannock, the seven-part series is based on the spine-tingling true story of Maria and Derek Broaddus ...

They put the house on the market asking for a bit more money than they had paid due to the renovation work. All leads were dropped when there was not enough evidence to link them to the letters. Do you know the history of the house? Better for me," the letter read. Do you know what lies within the walls of 657 Boulevard? The Watcher's identity has never been uncovered.

The shingle-style house with Dutch Colonial features has six bedrooms and four bathrooms, spanning 3,869 square feet. When Derek and Maria Broaddus bought the ...

Just days later, Tamron Hall covers the news on the [Today show](https://www.today.com/video/homeowners-sue-over-threatening-letters-from-the-watcher-469303875669). The prosecutor's office decides to follow up on a lead from the previous investigation—female DNA had been found on one of the envelopes—asking neighbors on Boulevard to voluntarily submit DNA samples for comparison. [responds](https://www.thecut.com/article/the-haunting-of-657-boulevard-in-westfield-new-jersey.html) to the Broadusses, telling them that they received one letter days before closing the sale but threw it away. The author taunts Derek and Maria about their rejected proposal, and suggests they intend to carry out physical harm against their family. [The Watcher](https://www.housebeautiful.com/design-inspiration/real-estate/a28680321/657-boulevard-westfield-new-jersey-watcher-house-sold/) has officially hit the streaming service. More than 100 Westfield residents attend the meeting to voice their concerns over the plan. The Woodses attorney, Richard Kaplow, says his clients were not legally required to disclose the note they received prior to closing the sale of 657 Boulevard. February 21, 2015: Less than a year after buying the home, the Broadduses decide to sell 657 Boulevard. For example, the envelope was addressed “M/M Braddus,” and the sentences had double spaces between them. When Derek and Maria Broaddus bought the home in June 2014 for nearly $1.4 million, their excitement quickly turned to dread as they began receiving threatening letters from “The Watcher.” The anonymous harasser claimed that the home had been a point of obsession for their family for decades, and that since their father's passing, they had been put in charge of watching over it. According to their son, Bill Shaffer, the couple paid about $23,000 for the home. June 5, 2014: The Broadusses receive their first letter from The Watcher, which is dated June 4, 2014.

The cast of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan's latest Netflix show 'The Watcher' discuss telling a story based on real events in wake of the duo's hit 'Dahmer ...

“You don’t really want to trigger anyone,” actor Henry Hunter Hall added of the pressure he felt to tell the real-life story on screen. “My daughter is one of those online sleuths. “The story itself is just a jumping off point for what he wants to do.” “I find it wildly fun. “There’s a lot of people that are very invested in this story that are waiting for it with bated breath and, I dare say, they want the exact story to be told,” he said. The story is based on that story, but really, it’s a Ryan Murphy creation,” Cannavale told The Hollywood Reporter about how he prepared for the role at the New York City premiere on Wednesday. “I love this genre,” she added. Far more theatrical and much more of a rollercoaster.” But Martindale said the real people on whom the show is based shouldn’t be worried about their portrayals. Soon after meeting their strange neighbors — portrayed by [Mia Farrow](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/t/mia-farrow/), Terry Kinney, Richard Kind and [Margo Martindale](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/t/margo-martindale/) — the couple begin receiving sinister letters from someone named “the Watcher.” Through the letters, the stalker starts to terrorize Dean, Nora and their kids. “I don’t think they’re depicted in a bad way,” she said. About his character, Dean, Cannavale added, “I worked very closely with Ryan in coming up with this guy.

Are we supposed to hate the Brannocks so we won't mind when they are tormented by their stalker? A recap of 'Welcome, Friends,' episode 1 of the Ryan Murphy ...

Naturally, Dean throws him out, and the best part of all of this is Pearl just being like, “Was he in the dumbwaiter? I can’t imagine the Westfield PD is going to be thrilled with this depiction of patronizing Detective Rourke Chamberland (Christopher McDonald) assuring the Brannocks that this is “maybe the safest town in America” (does anyone actually think that?) where the only crime worth noting is “a couple of disappearances.” He says it’s a prank. I absolutely lost it at Dean’s “How fast do you think a suicidal ferret would have to run into a wall to get enough momentum to crush his own fuckin’ skull?” Personally, I would be on the first train back to the city if someone broke into my house and murdered my pet. This is when we meet Sprinkles, and I write in my notes, “He will be the first to die.” Nora gushes over the air quality, and again I say there is no way an artist would be this over the moon about leaving Manhattan to move to New Jersey! Dean wants his kids to “have a yard to play in.” Dean, your daughter is in high school; she is not going to “play in the yard.” But sure! Karen tells us about how her ex sucked, and I’m not sure how relevant that is to the plot, but I would watch Jennifer Coolidge do pretty much anything, so I’m not mad about it. Dad is furious about this because he’s having a Don’t Worry Darling fantasy in which he moves his family to the suburbs so he can live in the past where teenage girls are not allowed to wear makeup for it will make them harlots and she must stay a child forever. Dean decides to just take out all their savings and burn through their 401(k)’s or whatever you have to do when you are spending too much money on a house and boom: The house is theirs. We also have children: Carter, a boy who was gifted a ferret named Sprinkles to ease the transition to the new home, and Ellie, a 15-year-old whose entire personality is “likes to be on her phone” and “wants to wear makeup.” Karen is Jennifer Coolidge, and when I saw her onscreen I said out loud, “Oh hell, yes.” Karen and Nora went to RISD together back when Nora was “crunchy” (read: less beige). [At the behest of that family](https://www.thecut.com/2022/10/the-watcher-657-boulevard-update.html#_ga=2.136065849.985561773.1665451855-2008340438.1629751243), the family in the series goes by a different name and resembles their real selves as little as possible. If you drink every time someone says “dumbwaiter,” you will be absolutely blitzed by the end of this episode.

Get to know The Watcher star, Isabel Gravitt! Here's all there is to know about the rising star, such as her age, Instagram, and more.

[ IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5825519/). She also has blue eyes and blonde hair. If you scroll through her page, you’ll find a baby photo of her, a photo of her mom, and just pictures of her living her life. Unfortunately, her exact birthdate is not publicly disclosed. If so, all you have to do is continue reading because we shared everything we know about Isabel Gravitt, like her age, Instagram, and more! The story centers around the Brannock family and their traumatic experience of moving into what they thought was their dream home.

THE WATCHER on Netflix is a new horror, drama, and mystery series based on a true story. You'll want to check this out. Full Series Review >

Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan are the creators of the Netflix series The Watcher. Inspired by the true story of the infamous “Watcher” house in New Jersey. Ominous letters from someone calling themself “The Watcher” are just the beginning as the neighborhood’s sinister secrets come spilling out. The pilot episode of this latest Netflix series was directed by Ryan Murphy himself. Both due to very specific information and barely (if at all) hidden threats and physical things happenings inside and around the house. All from someone calling themselves “The Watcher”. Here they meet Karen (Jennifer Coolidge), who is both the realtor and an old acquaintance of Nora’s. The cast is absolutely brilliant and chock-full of actors that you’ll know from other amazing series (and movies). They do, however, enjoy sitting in front of their own house, in lawn chairs, just sipping lemonade and staring at the new neighbors. They purchase their dream home in the idyllic suburb of Westfield, New Jersey. Continue reading our The Watcher series review below. Read our full The Watcher series review here!

The Watcher season 1, episode 1 recap - "Welcome, Friends". This article contains major spoilers for the Netflix series.

On the other side are Mo ( [Margo Martindale](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0553269/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3)) and Mitch ( [Richard Kind](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0454236/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0)), who aggressively harvest arugula on whichever side of the fence they feel like. The letter arrives on the first morning and is signed by “The Watcher”. The episode’s title, “Welcome, Friends”, is taken from it, but the letter isn’t particularly friendly; it implies the house at 657 Boulevard has an eerie past, that there’s something in the walls, that it has been watched for generations and will continue to be watched, and that “young blood” should accumulate in it. [Mia Farrow](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001201/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t10)) and Jasper ( [Terry Kinney](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0455767/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t4)) Winslow, the latter being the local eccentric who seemingly has no compunction about strolling into someone else’s home like it’s his own. [The Watcher](https://readysteadycut.com/2022/10/06/the-watcher-release-date/), even though it’s [based on a true story](https://readysteadycut.com/2022/10/13/is-the-watcher-based-on-a-true-story/), is very much a [Ryan Murphy](https://readysteadycut.com/2022/09/21/dahmer-monster-the-jeffrey-dahmer-story-review-lurid-and-uncomfortable/) production. They focus on the pool and the nearby lake and the big bedrooms and bizarrely overlook the creepy girl standing ominously in the garden, the neighborhood rumors about all the terrible things that have happened there, or the old-fashioned dumbwaiter that’ll definitely be used for a scare or a plot point down the line.

The horror series premieres Thursday, with Naomi Watts and Union City's Bobby Cannavale starring.

A year later, the couple was finally able [ to sell their one-time dream home](https://www.nj.com/union/2019/08/the-westfield-watcher-house-finally-sells-at-a-400k-loss.html) to a family from town that didn’t seem to mind the house’s history — or perhaps couldn’t miss out on such a deal. (He wrote that selling the rights to Netflix did not even cover their losses, but did give the family a modicum of control, as opposed to As Wiedeman reported in New York Magazine, it was more wrathful and threatening than any of the previous mailings, suggesting harm would come to them in the form of an accident, a fire, a mysterious illness or maybe the death of a pet. The Broadduses still live in Westfield and have had to deal not only with the national spotlight, but also their fellow residents speculating that they may have created the hoax themselves. I think they made a lot of sacrifices to buy what they deemed to be their dream home,” Chambliss reflected. But a DNA sample, surreptitiously grabbed from her water bottle at work, was not a match, the now-retired detective said Tuesday in an interview. “Do you know the history of the house? They suspected the writer might be one of their closest neighbors, said Wiedeman, who interviewed the couple. “And so that either means that there’s someone who lives very nearby, or was spending a lot of time hanging around.” These letters were addressed to the Broadduses, though the name was misspelled. I asked the [prior owners] to bring me young blood,” the letter said, according to the lawsuit. Some words from the actual letters do appear in the series — including the infamous “young blood” lines.

Reeves Wiedeman tells VF about reporting the story on which Netflix's “The Watcher” is based, the primary theories, and his hopes for unmasking the culprit.

But yeah…I think one thing that made the story so intriguing to people is it does feel like it should be able to be solved. And then trying to talk to people in the town. But they still owned the house and were trying to figure out how to get rid of it and move on from that. It was just letters showing up in the mail. Westfield, like any town, is a place where people like to gossip about the biggest story in town. As a reporter, how obsessed did you get with the story? She had this idea after the story had initially had its viral moment in 2015, after the lawsuit that the Broadduses had filed had been made public. Initially what we were doing was trying to figure out how people felt about living next door to this house, or living in the same town. And they were still trying to figure this out. In anticipation of the true-crime adaptation, VF spoke to Wiedeman about his experience reporting the story, whether The Watcher targeted him, and his hopes for the case finally being solved. I’m just kind of watching it all happen, so to speak, to use that word. [“The Watcher,”](https://www.thecut.com/article/the-haunting-of-657-boulevard-in-westfield-new-jersey.html) which detailed their saga and the ensuing investigation into The Watcher’s identity.

The neighbors (played by, among others, Mia Farrow, Richard Kind, and Margo Martindale) take an instant dislike to the Brannocks, making each of them initial ...

By the time we reach a coda demonstrating the trauma and dislocation both Dean and Nora feel, it’s almost hard to know how to take it: Their world is one of so little gravity that it’s hard to understand, based on the oddity and randomness we’ve seen up until the show’s ending, why these characters in an unrelatable, ultimately unremarkable fiction didn’t just bounce back. To wit: The couple at its center, as written, are somewhat vain and careless in their pursuit of a home beyond their reach. In Murphy’s typical way, there are plot twists — deaths and revivals, with the specter of the supernatural seeming to wax and wane. The grandness of the Murphy method collides with the truly interesting elements of the Watcher story. Here, the people the Brannocks meet often open from a position of outré hostility, ironing out much of the magazine story’s insight about the ways in which suburban rage veils itself in politeness. “Halston’s” gilded retelling of recent-ish celebrity culture recalled “Feud,” with the adversaries, perhaps, being the designer and his own ego.

But Theodora does have a theory. She thinks that Dakota has a motive to harass the Brannocks since his business is security, and nobody wants security unless ...

We get an answer to the first problem straight away, at least: Dean runs into Dakota outside, and he straight-up confesses to both installing the camera without Dean’s knowledge and disseminating the footage as revenge. This is weird since a) there isn’t a camera in the bedroom, at least not one Dean knows about, b) he doesn’t recall the incident at all, having presumably slept through it and c) the girl looks exactly like Pat Graff, John’s allegedly slutty daughter, who you’ll recall is dead. Dean has a bee in his bonnet about Dakota anyway since he knows something is going on between him and Ellie — she was earlier sending him pictures of her in just a bra — and he keeps contriving reasons to return to the property and flirt with her. She knows he’s not racist, which she admits when he confronts her about it, but in her words, “This is what you get.” Dean faces losing his job, and both he and Nora are immediately considered racists in the community. This one is a fat envelope with the words “Watch Me” formed on the outside in magazine cutouts, like a ransom note. Dean heads straight to her photo album — and not her messages, weirdly — and spots the sexy pictures being exchanged back and forth, so he heads downstairs and goes ballistic, grounding Ellie for the foreseeable future.

They're not interested in character, mood, or anything really but a metronomic revealing of twists because they think that momentum is the only thing that ...

[The Shining](/reviews/great-movie-the-shining-1980)” or “ [The Amityville Horror](/reviews/the-amityville-horror-1979)” (as it should be really) in that it’s primarily about the unraveling of a patriarch more than an actual, tangible threat. (Just a warning that almost none of this actually happened.) I generally have no problem with creators taking a true story and using it to build something artistically interesting, but “The Watcher” just keeps expanding and expanding, adding new rooms to this TV story in a way that'a haphazard and often unnecessary. The true story of “The Watcher” is a haunting one because of the primal fears it taps into. “The Watcher” is the kind of thing that would have been a network TV Movie of the Week in the ‘70s or ‘80s, which means it’s a Netflix original series now. Lines like “Do you know what lives in the walls of 657 Boulevard” and “Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested” naturally sent the Broadduses into a full-blown panic. The writer of the letters was clearly very familiar with the home and the lives of the Broadduses, including personal details that made it clear he or she was watching the house.

An interview with 'The Watcher' cast members Naomi Watts, Bobby Cannavale, Mia Farrow, Jennifer Coolidge, Margo Martindale, and Noma Dumezweni about 657 ...

“I would be out the moment that letter came. Oh, I would not have stayed there for a second.” “Just the curiosity about what is the workings of that killer’s mind?” I want to know somebody else is more afraid than I am.” Other people may be more afraid than the actors in The Watcher, but perhaps no one is as prepared to deal with the possibility of being stalked by some anonymous weirdo. In a [recent update](https://www.thecut.com/2022/10/the-watcher-657-boulevard-update.html#_ga=2.268606836.481760117.1665450095-849310626.1619458888) to the original article, Wiedeman reported that the house was eventually sold (at a loss) to a younger couple and that The Watcher’s identity has still not been determined. I would [be] very afraid if I were them.” The letters sparked controversy in the Westfield community and spooked the couple so much that they never moved in. The series is replete with eccentric neighbors (Margo Martindale plays Mo, who immediately finds a reason to dislike the new family on the block; Mia Farrow’s Pearl is a local historian who seems to know a great deal about 657 Boulevard), jump-scare encounters involving dumbwaiters, at least one social-climbing real-estate agent (that’s Karen, the character played by Coolidge), and plenty of reasons to give Dean and Nora Brannock (Bobby Cannavale and Naomi Watts) severe buyer’s remorse. I would have them, actually, across the street at the neighbor’s house, coming off their trees, so it would give a point of view of my house. “Will the young blood play in the basement?” the mystery writer asked in one letter. I would have cameras everywhere. The first room I’m having built in here is a safe room.’ I would be jacked with cameras.

The Watcher ending explained. This article contains major spoilers for The Watcher season 1, episode 7, "Haunting".

It stands to reason that Pearl was the original Watcher, used the letters to send John mad, and then somehow recruited him into the fold to assist with tormenting future occupants into keeping the house untouched. When Pearl suggested that Jasper may have written the Ode to a House letter on the typewriters at the public library, which is where “Bill” apparently works, she could have been telling the truth, since that connection makes total sense. Anyway, the Brannocks sell the house — to Karen. And of course, all manner of weirdnesses occur when she moves in, including a letter from the Watcher, the bath taps being left running, her dog being killed, and a strange, hooded figure roaming around. She knew the private old couple who sold Dean and Nora the house. She knows all of the women of color who are members of the country club and — nobody should be proud of this, she says — there aren’t very many. Meanwhile, the Westfield Preservation Society has expanded to include Mo and Roger Kaplan. She made up John Graff and hired the man who pretended to be him. With this news, Dean goes to visit Mo to apologize for sending her the letter, and to give his condolences over Mitch, who has apparently died of an embolism. And now the only way to get it back was to convince Dean and Nora to sell. Because Theodora was the primary earner, she had to pay alimony. But really, it was only the beginning.

“When I was growing up,” actor Richard Kind told Vulture, “there was a kid, Vinny; he used to take mice and rats and tie them to little army soldiers and throw ...

When asked to elaborate, Martindale said strictly, “No, because that would probably bring bad feelings to that girl.” Also at the premiere was Sandra Bernhard, who stars in the upcoming season of Murphy’s There were a lot of occurrences like this in this sleepy little town.” Kinney went on to even describe one instance he used for his own role in The Watcher, saying, “I kind of pulled from this guy who used to walk by our house for my character because he was a very benign person. “Maybe when I was in school at the University of Michigan; there was somebody on my dorm floor,” she said. For Terry Kinney, he says he grew up in a town that had more than one horrific thing happen: “I went to a Catholic grade school with a guy, and I was reading the newspaper one day and I saw, ‘Awful Murders in Lincoln, Illinois,’ and it was the kid I went to grade school with. He was always eccentric; he was a guy that memorized part of the Encyclopedia Britannica. And for some of the cast, a freaky next-door neighbor isn’t anything new.

In the series, streaming now, Dean and Nora Brannock (played by Bobby Cannavale and Naomi Watts) move to an idyllic New Jersey neighborhood where they assume ...

Former students claimed to The Cut that he had talked in his classes about the obsession he had with a home in Westfield and had written at least 50 letters to not the owners, but the home itself. In October, New York Magazine’s [The Cut](https://www.thecut.com/2022/10/the-watcher-657-boulevard-update.html) reported that when the new owners moved in, the Broadduses gave them a note via their real estate attorney: “We wish you nothing but the peace and quiet that we once dreamed of in this house.” They also included a photo of The Watcher’s handwriting just in case any new letters arrived. [the Broadduses sold the home](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/nyregion/the-watcher-house-sold-new-jersey.html) for $959,000, resulting in a $400,000 loss for a house they never lived in. The new letter was more aggressive than the previous three with the writer complaining about the media attention the Broadduses had brought to “my neighborhood,” but celebrated how the locals had “saved the soul of 657 Boulevard with my orders.” The Watcher even threatened revenge on Derek and Maria, seemingly plotting their deaths: “Maybe a car accident. (The complaint was later dismissed by a judge.) “You wonder who The Watcher is? They were unable to find a buyer due to the creepy letters, which the Broadduses chose to disclose to anyone who came and looked at the property. The writer questioned whether they would let their kids, who the writer referred to as “young blood,” play in the basement. In time they will.” This time around, The Watcher referred to the Broadduses by name (misspelling their surname as “Mr. Let the party begin.” It was signed “The Watcher” in a typed cursive font. Inside was a typed note that started cordially enough, according to the 2018 [New York Magazine](https://www.thecut.com/article/the-haunting-of-657-boulevard-in-westfield-new-jersey.html) story that inspired the Netflix series: “Dearest new neighbor at 657 Boulevard, allow me to welcome you to the neighborhood.” “I will find out.” (The police reportedly searched the home and found nothing in the walls.) [Naomi Watts](https://time.com/4838709/naomi-watts-quick-talk/)) move to an idyllic New Jersey neighborhood where they assume their kids will be cocooned from the evils of the world.

Nora believes Jasper is the Watcher. Dean thinks it's Mitch and Mo. But when a previous resident mentions cultists who drink baby blood, things get much ...

Andrew explains, helpfully, that he did a little recon and the cult likes to drink the blood of children because of the FEAR that’s in their blood. In case you are interested in the alarm teen’s theories, he thinks the Watcher is Jasper but also that Jasper is harmless. The important intel from Andrew at this point is (1) they sold the house to “some LLC” and (2) “Jasper is a good guy, he always brought me my mail.” Okay, the mail is kind of a critical part of the whole situation, Andrew. Renovations continue apace at the Brannock household, which horrifies Pearl (the trees!!!) and infuriates Mo, who has it out with Dean over the jackhammer and such. you need to sell your house immediately.” Nora says she misses New York and Karen says, “Did you know that New York City is going to be underwater in like, five years?” When they check into the motel, even the receptionist is like, “Jesus, what are you DOING here?” (Paraphrasing only slightly.) Dean tries to sell the kids on the motel by telling them it has a pool… Nora and Dean — who still wear beige and white almost all the time, clinging to their fantasy, yet some grays are creeping in — have a very odd conversation. Nora and the kids are staying at a motel, ostensibly because Carter has asthma and the reno dust troubles his delicate senses (poor kid, seriously), but really because the house is a scary place full of Jaspers. She has this convoluted and unnecessary backstory about drinking and being a jazz singer and I’m not convinced you need to know any of this except it’s an opportunity for Dumezweni to chew that scenery. The funniest part of this scene is when Nora says they can’t spare $7,000 (apparently the show’s favorite quantity of cash; this is also the sticker price the alarm teen quoted for their security system) because “we need that money for the renovation.” Yes, definitely invest in the haunted house you don’t even feel safe enough to sleep in, the site where fair Sprinkles was slaughtered while you all slept. He straight-up tells the Brannocks that they should DIY this crisis because he’s not having taxpayer money (as if the Brannocks are not, you know, themselves taxpayers) allocated to solving this particular issue. Unless that dog is the Watcher, [this is not providing the necessary atmospheric detail you think](https://slate.com/culture/2010/06/pick-up-just-about-any-novel-and-you-ll-find-the-phrase-somewhere-a-dog-barked.html)!

Ryan Murphy's true-crime adaptation 'The Watcher' dropped on Netflix Thursday — read our Episode 1 recap, then grade the premiere.

The Watcher’s identity remains a mystery by the end of the hour… In the wake of The Watcher’s first letter, things at 657 Boulevard grow more concerning, and quickly. Both Carter and Ellie notice a man in one of the bedrooms, silently looking out the window to the front yard. Nora and Dean take the letter to the police station, where the detective they meet with is largely useless. (Episode 1 only skims the surface of Dean and Nora’s money troubles, but this much is clear: They can’t afford to buy this house, and they’re putting a lot on the line financially to do so.) — about the owners of a suburban New Jersey home who were stalked and threatened by an anonymous letter writer calling themselves The Watcher.

Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale star in the limited true-crime series about the Westfield Watcher.

And if you’re able to make it through in one sitting, the cast says it’s worth the binge. “It was just incredible to see how it all fits together and it’s totally bingeable.” “This incredible cast is filled with really quirky, interesting characters [that] really bring a dynamic and all the haunting aspects that you need in a story like this,” Watts says. However, the Broaddus family was never able to find the source of the letter, with Derek and Maria eventually forced to abandon their dream home and take a financial loss on the way out. You know, having that sense of loss of power and control,” Cannavale says. “And it’s got a scary, haunted house vibe about it.” “It’s interesting because we know the story comes from an original source. From there, the letters grew more suspicious as the sender included details about the family, their renovations and other things that only someone stalking the house day after day could really know. Among the increasingly suspicious neighbors, there’s a kooky older lady named Pearl ( “It’s about things that I think we can all relate to. “It’s pretty scary. It’s pretty dark.

The new Ryan Murphy show is based on a haunting true story.

A lot of emotions come with fear and as an audience member as well, I enjoy watching fear and danger and the thrills that play out on the screen. “There’s nothing that he does that is mundane,” said Farrow about Murphy’s storytelling skills on the red carpet. I think he has a really unique take on culture and on the zeitgeist of the moment,” said Cannavale. “The horror genre is a repetitive theme in my career and I’m very aware of it, but it’s fun to play though. Like Murphy, Watts also is drawn to the psychological-horror genre. The critically lauded creator has taken psychological stories about the darkest of human behavior and made them appeal to a mass audience. “What makes the story so scary and creepy is that anyone can relate to it. Jennifer Coolidge makes an appearance in the series as a fictional local real estate agent who sells the property to the couple. “This show is different from the other true crime stories because there is humor. “Our homes became our safe haven and we connected to our neighbors. They start receiving terrifying letters from an unknown person named only as The Watcher, who says it is their duty to watch over the house, and begins terrorizing the family. Soon after the Broaddus family settled into their home, they received threatening, anonymous letters that ranged from eerily specific details about their home to threats against their children.

Who is The Watcher of 657 Boulevard in Westfield, N.J. in the Netflix show? Here's what you need to know about the ending of the thriller and how to ...

Find [NJ.com](http://nj.com/) [ on Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/NJ.com). John shot and killed his entire family and flees the area, never to be seen again. Dean suspects John to be The Watcher early on. [nj.com/tip](http://nj.com/tip) Dean and Nora began to spiral as they become obsessed with finding out who The Watcher is. Dean and Nora are left with a void of emptiness as they never find out who is truly watching them. Was it a dream? Follow him on Twitter: [@ChrisBurch856](https://twitter.com/chrisburch856). The audience is able to infer John Graff is The Watcher. “The Watcher” ending explained: Who is “The Watcher” in the Netflix series? Their marriage is in jeopardy, Dean slightly loses his mind and his job, and Nora grows angry and wants to sell the house. What is “The Watcher” on Netflix about?

But the beautiful house at 657 Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey, was nothing short of a nightmare for the family. The Netflix mini-series “The Watcher” is a ...

They believed that it was greed that made them buy the house because that was the kind of people that the house attracted. Dean believed it was Kaplan, whom he had seen in the tunnel that he found in the basement. The tunnel was a long one, and there was a bed in it. John Graff had murdered his family in 1995, and in the meeting, the man mentioned that he had started living in Whitefield in 1995. The Brannock family gave up on the investigation when they realized that they could not come up with an answer and had no evidence to back their claim. Flanagan read the letters that the Watcher had sent to the Brannock family, she confirmed that it was Roger Kaplan. He asked his students to write a letter to the house owners of the houses they admired. Nonetheless, Dakota agreed to cooperate and provided his DNA sample to compare it with the DNA found in the letter. John decided to do what the Watcher was asking of him. They wondered if the owner of the house knew the history behind the walls of the house and the reason why the basement was left unfinished. Dakota went to the police station with his mother and a lawyer. The house has been watched over since the 1920s; someone took up the responsibility of watching it in the 1960s, and now it was the writer’s turn to watch the house.

Luke David Blumm as Carter Brannock, Isabel Marie Gravitt as Ellie Brannock, Bobby Cannavale as Dean Brannock and Naomi Watts as Nora Brannock in "The Watcher.".

Neighbors were asked to voluntarily submit DNA to compare to that found on one of the envelopes. Despite reducing the price multiple times, they were unable to sell it. “My grandfather watched the house in the 1920s and my father watched in the 1960s. The coupled purchased a six-bedroom home in Westfield, New Jersey for $1,355,657 and spent about $100,000 on renovations. It is now my time.” After finishing up a day of painting, Derek Reeves went to check the mail and found a letter addressed to “The New Owner.”

Jennifer Coolidge, Bobby Cannavale, Naomi Watts and Mia Farrow are phenomenal in Netflix's latest true-crime series. But nothing can save this from being ...

Strip away the phenomenal acting talent, and some of the more outre decisions to liven up the source material, and what is left is a seven-hour whodunnit about a typewriter. The Watcher is a world away from the daring, groundbreaking originals that Netflix used to seemingly conjure up from thin air. It is also jarring that the Broaddus’ home is in no way an attractive property. At the very least, the cast is absolutely berserk. More than anything, it is this cast that holds The Watcher together. I’d be staggered if anyone can remember a single thing about it come Christmas. From the outside it looks like Tony Soprano’s McMansion, and the inside is riddled with secret rooms, hidden tunnels, pianos that appear to play themselves and something that can only really be described as Chekhov’s Dumb Waiter. Personally, I’d rank this somewhere in the upper-mid range of his work. Forget that the story had already been made into a movie – 2016’s Lifetime film The Watcher (“Overall not a bad movie to kill time on a Sunday afternoon”, reads a typical Rotten Tomatoes user review) – this had Murphy written all over it. It is not in charge of me. Which, you have to admit, is an automatic Murphy slam-dunk. So you can imagine the absolute joy he must have felt when he first read Reeves Wiedeman’s 2018 New York Magazine article entitled [The Watcher](https://www.thecut.com/article/the-haunting-of-657-boulevard-in-westfield-new-jersey.html).

The Watcher is now streaming on Netflix! Does the ferret die in the mystery-thriller series? We shared the answer to this question right here.

Then, the Brannocks call the police to find out who broke into their home and killed Sprinkles. Flash forward further into the episode, Sprinkles escapes from their cage and ventures around the house as the Brannocks are asleep. He asks Dean where the ferret’s leash is, and Dean replies that he doesn’t know.

On Sept. 21, Ryan Murphy unveiled Dahmer—Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, a true-crime thriller that has since become, depending on your metric of choice, ...

The Watcher is in part a reversal of that movie; it’s the suburbs that feel strange and sinister to people used to living in the city. Collectively, they’re a microcosm of a culture that tells us to mortgage every aspect of our lives in order to attain the trappings of wealth. So it makes sense that, on a thematic level, everyone is the Watcher, even largely well-meaning people like Theodora, in this panopticon of a society. She casts herself as the house’s previous owner and says that she sent the letters, invented the Graffs, reverse-engineered the Watcher based on her own knowledge of the town’s quirks. Murphy and Brennan pay conspicuous homage to Rosemary’s Baby, from Farrow’s presence on the other side of the young-old binary to the basement baby sacrifice to the name Dakota shares with the [Lifetime movie called The Watcher](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5497458/), but also the number of kids and their ages. Dean allows the stresses of his career and new home to gradually transform him into the prototypical rich, white, conservative suburban dad. Unsolved when the original article ran, the case [remains a mystery](https://www.thecut.com/2022/10/the-watcher-657-boulevard-update.html) in 2022. One disconcerting aspect of the article is that, rather than uncovering too few suspects in a town that prides itself on safety, it finds too many. [eerie New York magazine article](https://www.thecut.com/article/the-haunting-of-657-boulevard-in-westfield-new-jersey.html) from 2018, The Watcher follows a family that buys a dream home in the wealthy suburb of Westfield, NJ, only to find that someone else has already, in a sense, laid claim to it. [Naomi Watts](https://time.com/4838709/naomi-watts-quick-talk/)) and Dean Brannock (Bobby Cannavale) and their kids, 16-year-old Ellie (Isabel Gravitt) and her little brother Carter (Luke David Blumm), are surrounded by weirdos. Time will tell whether The Watcher turns out to be a hit with subscribers (though I’m betting it will be).

Netflix's new Ryan Murphy true crime series "The Watcher" is based on a story of a real house and stalker in New Jersey.

](https://www.northjersey.com/story/money/real-estate/2017/10/19/report-watcher-house-lawsuit-dismissed/778783001/) In the real story, the Broaddus family had not moved into the house when the first letter arrived and never actually lived there, scared off by the letters. Here are three major differences between the Netflix adaptation and the true story (mild spoilers for the first few episodes follow): The couple receive their first threatening letter only after they've moved into the house with their two children, one of whom finds it. [producer Ryan Murphy](https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2022/10/10/netflix-dahmer-got-wrong-what-friend-of-the-family-got-right/8195714001/) has jumped to No. The real watcher was never found.

A review of The Watcher, the Netflix limited series starring Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale as a couple who moves into a lovely home, only to be terrorized ...

The longer you watch The Watcher, the more you start to feel like Dean, untethered, like you’re living in a world that has become completely cockeyed. Yes, there is a long list of quibbles and questions that can legitimately be raised about just about everything that happens in this series. How easy it is to get sucked into true crime, whether it involves you personally or is something you’re consuming as content — this is a dynamic that The Watcher understands well. couple that vibe with an obvious desire to capture the zeitgeist of the COVID era. Nora’s a bit of a social climber, while Dean is impulsive and not always honest, which bolsters the notion that we should be wary of everyone in this auspicious Jersey Zip Code. Unlike Dahmer or much of American Horror Story, this Murphy project doesn’t overdo it with the gore. Watching The Watcher is undeniably a rush, so much so that even when certain plot twists don’t make sense — and trust me that many of them do not — it doesn’t even matter. Consequently, a series of events that was genuinely bizarre becomes even freakier once the writers start sprinkling in even more wild details. Eccentric local historian Pearl Winslow (an astutely cast Mia Farrow) and her intellectually disabled brother Jasper (Terry Kinney) also have a tendency to pop up unannounced, sometimes even in the house’s dumbwaiter. The details in the letters — about the Brannocks’ children, Ellie (Isabel Gravitt) and Carter (Luke David Blumm), and the family’s behavior — become increasingly specific and disturbing. Murphy, Brennan, and their fellow writers and filmmakers (several of whom also worked on the duo’s extremely popular [Dahmer](https://www.vulture.com/article/dahmer-monster-netflix-series-review-true-crime.html)) throw a kitchen sink of issues and true-crime tropes into these episodes, as well as a kitchen island controversially accented with butcher-block countertops. [story Reeves Wiedeman wrote for this magazine](https://www.thecut.com/article/the-haunting-of-657-boulevard-in-westfield-new-jersey.html) about a couple who bought their dream house in Westfield, New Jersey, only to be terrorized by anonymous letters from someone who creepily called themselves “The Watcher” — is subtextually a commentary on a variety of contemporary fixations.

Netflix's 'The Watcher' episode 3 John Graff family murder sequence is based on the real John List murders in New Jersey, where a man made himself lunch ...

Agents went to the man's home and discovered that Clark was actually List, who'd built a new life for himself in the Virginia suburbs. List left a note, indicating that he ended their lives to protect them from an uptick in evil in the world. He was [arrested in 1989](https://apnews.com/article/0abc5141429eda579004f6cf677bbae6), convicted and sentenced to five life terms in prison. As Theodora narrates, we see a flashback that reveals John Graff is the same present-day John who made himself a cold cut lunch in Dean's kitchen, and we learn that his psychological descent began after he lost his job and started siphoning money from his mother's savings account to keep up the illusion that he was employed. He later killed his mother on the second floor, waited for his daughter to return home from school before shooting her as well, and ultimately traveled to his son's basketball game, drove him back to the house, and shot him when they walked through the door. Their conversation grows increasingly unnerving, with John urging Dean to take his family to a Lutheran church down the road while babbling about cyclical chaos breeding world destruction, until Dean becomes hostile and John departs.

Bobby Cannavale's character makes a shocking discovery in an episode 3 sequence that drew inspiration from the real-life John List family murders.

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It revolves around Dean and Nora Brannock, an American couple who purchase their ideal house, 657 Boulevard, in Westfield, New Jersey. But they soon lose their ...

There was a likelihood that Karen was the Watcher because she didn’t appear to be scared to buy the house despite the frightening messages. She was the only selfless in the crowd of greedy eyes whose reputation as a Watcher was not deserving at all. However, that moment of satisfaction was short-lived as Theodora passed away soon, and it came to light that she was not the Watcher and just intended to give Dean a sense of relief. They shifted to the New York house, and Dean even joined therapy, but he could not forget the mystical beauty of the house. From the beginning, Karen appeared to be a lovely friend but ultimately revealed herself to be a villain. She falsely confessed the crime of being a Watcher and represented herself as the culprit. She was nearly certain that her husband was attempting to sell the home by sending her these letters, but she subsequently learned that everything was well-planned and had nothing to do with Dean. His internal struggles led him to do this and hide his failure in front of his family. Nora’s confusion is understandable, given that her husband, Dean, kept secrets from her and wrote the last letter as a Watcher. Dean did not want to let the dream mansion go easily, but when he was unable to make a partner in the law firm, he sent his wife Nora one last letter as a watcher, threatening her to leave the house. The hidden subterranean entrance in the house, too, was frightening enough for the couple. It was revealed that the previous owner of 657 Boulevard also received these letters.

After the second letter, episode 2 of The Watcher sees the Brannocks really shaken. They go to Chamberland once again and plead with him to investigate ...

He is lining up to do more damage than good to the family and his fracturing relationships in the sinking boat that is his family is not a great sight. This show is shaping up to be a compelling mystery with moving parts about family dynamics and the idea of drowning oneself with paranoia. The Italian is stout in talking back to her and says he can do whatever he wants in the house. Everyone is under the scanner and in the traditional whodunit style, we now even have a PI to spice things up. We still do not know if she is involved in the bid to remove the Brannocks from the house. The family sans Dean goes back to the motel. This is a true crime drama and the true crime in The Watcher is not seeing more of Jennifer Coolidge. He says that Nora just wants to leave the house behind and go back to the city. Rose started to go through the same episodes that Dean has gone through in the house. The family returns the next day and when they hear ambulances outside the house, Nora and Dean go out to inspect. The family gets a room in a motel nearby and Dean goes back to the house to sleep to let the workers in the next day. When he goes out, no one is there, but we can see someone standing in the shadows and watching him.