Night Watch
2016 · 7m · Estados Unidos
Directed by Barry Battles
Genres: crime, mystery, thriller
On a blind date, Anna and Brendan meet for dinner without knowing who the other really is. During the meal, they discover something unexpected about each other.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The blind date setup screams rom-com, but Battles subverts it into something genuinely unsettling—a thriller that uses the expectation of romance as camouflage for something much darker. It's the kind of premise that makes you feel stupid for not seeing it coming, which is exactly when it works best.
Battles executes a controlled tonal pivot that recalls the precision of early Fincher, where social ritual becomes the formal container for creeping dread; the dinner table itself functions as a locked room, a neat inversion of thriller staging.
The film hinges on a single choice—the reveal of what 'unexpected' really means—and Battles trusts the performance and editing to hold that secret until the exact right moment, letting tension build through restraint rather than exposition.