TL;DR: Watching You turns modern voyeurism into artful anxiety. Think Gone Girl with GoPros, The Dry with a data plan, and you’ve got one of Stan’s slickest, sexiest, and most socially aware thrillers yet.

There’s a moment early in Watching You—Stan’s new six-part Australian thriller—where I realized I’d been gripping my phone like a stress ball. Not because of a jump scare, but because I suddenly became hyper aware of the tiny black circle at the top of the screen staring back at me. A camera. Always on. Always watching. And that’s the central pulse of Watching You: it’s not just about who’s behind the lens—it’s about the primal terror of being seen when we think we’re alone.

The premise: sex, secrets, and surveillance

Based (loosely) on JP Pomare’s novel The Last Guests, Watching You opens with paramedic Lina (Aisha Dee) and her fiancé Cain (Chai Hansen) indulging in some spicy roleplay at a bar. Think Eyes Wide Shut meets Bondi Rescue. But while Cain fizzles out faster than a cheap candle, Lina’s thirst for danger doesn’t. Cue Dan (Josh Helman), the quietly magnetic stranger who becomes the worst possible one-night stand in history.

The next morning, Lina returns to his rental house to look for her missing engagement ring—only to find a hidden camera disguised in a lamp. Minutes later, a video of her illicit night arrives on her phone with the text, “I’m watching you.”

What follows is part Hitchcockian slow burn, part tech-age cautionary tale, and part guilty-pleasure throwback to the erotic thrillers of the 1990s. If Basic Instinct had a VPN subscription and an Aussie accent, this would be it.

Aisha Dee is the heartbeat of the chaos

Let’s talk about Aisha Dee. You probably remember her as the bubbly teen from The Saddle Club or the sharp-tongued millennial in Apple Cider Vinegar. Here, she ditches all that wholesome energy to deliver something raw, nervous, and complex. Dee nails the fine line between guilt and terror—she’s the kind of protagonist who’s strong because she’s terrified, not despite it.

Even when the script occasionally falls into predictable thriller tropes (there’s a lot of “who can I trust?” and “what’s on that USB drive?” energy), Dee elevates it. Her performance is the emotional equivalent of a cracked phone screen: fragile, flawed, but still functioning under pressure.

Josh Helman (Furiosa, Jack Reacher) also deserves props for his poker-faced Dan. He’s the kind of guy who could be your worst mistake or your savior—and the show milks that ambiguity for every drop of tension.

The tech paranoia hits hard

Creators Alexei Mizin and Ryan van Dijk deserve credit for weaponizing one of modern life’s most banal anxieties: that everything is being recorded. Whether it’s your smart fridge, your phone, or that dodgy Airbnb you booked last summer, Watching You turns everyday tech into a horror show.

There’s a particularly chilling moment when Lina scrolls through what looks like hundreds of camera feeds—all showing different couples in their most intimate moments. It’s a gut-punch reminder that “the cloud” isn’t some fluffy metaphor. It’s a prison yard, and someone always has the key.

Unlike your average Netflix thriller that throws every twist at the wall, Watching You stays focused on its theme: the collision of desire and digital surveillance. It’s an Aussie production that feels global in its paranoia but grounded in local textures—the beaches, the slang, the sunlit dread.

Style points: slick, sexy, slightly sadistic

Visually, Watching You is stunning. Directors lean into a cool, almost surgical aesthetic—lots of reflections, clean lines, and glass surfaces that double as visual metaphors for transparency and deceit. Every camera angle feels deliberate, every shadow a threat.

The production design practically hums with menace. Even the most ordinary domestic spaces—bedrooms, hallways, backyard pools—feel like sets waiting to reveal a hidden lens. It’s Hitchcock filtered through an iPhone 15.

And while the show borrows heavily from 90s erotic thrillers (think Sliver, Unfaithful, Fatal Attraction), it never leans into sleaze for sleaze’s sake. The eroticism here isn’t gratuitous—it’s psychological. Every kiss and every glance comes loaded with risk.

Where it stumbles

For all its polish, Watching You occasionally trips over its own cleverness. Around the midpoint, the show starts trading character nuance for plot propulsion. We lose some of the emotional grit that makes Lina so compelling in the early episodes.

Some of the supporting characters—especially the influencer couple Axel (Luke Cook) and Clare (Laura Gordon)—veer a bit too close to caricature. They’re fun, sure, but they feel imported from a different show, one that’s airing on E! instead of Stan.

And while I appreciate that the series stretches Pomare’s novel into a six-episode arc, I can’t help thinking it might’ve worked better as a tighter four-part miniseries. The tension slackens just when it should be tightening the screws.

The verdict: Big Brother meets Bondi Beach

Despite a few pacing hiccups, Watching You lands as one of the most stylish Australian thrillers of the past few years. It’s sleek, unsettling, and surprisingly thoughtful about intimacy in the digital age.

It reminds us that privacy is the real endangered species—and that sometimes, the scariest monster in a thriller isn’t the stalker or the hacker. It’s the version of ourselves that keeps feeding the machine with every click, like, and late-night search.

If you’ve ever covered your laptop webcam with tape or side-eyed your smart speaker, Watching You will make that paranoia feel like self-care.