Can movies and TV shows have doppelgangers? I don’t know. But I do know folks have clicked here looking for info about the Watcher, the movie, or Peacock’s new series The Resort only to learn they share the same name as other movies and TV shows. Not only that, but they also sort of “look” similar. Insofar as they all land on the spooky spectrum somewhere.
In case you’re scratching your head wondering what I’m talking about, let’s take a closer look at these movies and TV shows that share the same name.
The Resort Movie and TV Show
We’ll start with The Resort, the movie. It released on VOD on Apr. 30, 2021. It’s now available to stream with a Hulu subscription. It’s also available to rent on Prime Video, Redbox, Vudu, and Apple TV.
It’s about Lex, a writer obsessed with the paranormal, whose friends gift her an excursion to a Hawaiian island where a ghost known as the Half-Faced Girl haunts an abandoned resort. Worse, they find her.
But there’s also a TV show called The Resort. It started streaming on Peacock on July 28, 2022. It’s also got a tropical vibe, but instead of Hawaii, it’s set in Mexico.
The synopsis on its trailer describes it as “a multi-generational, coming-of-age love story disguised as a fast-paced mystery about the disappointment of time. An anniversary trip puts a marriage to the test when the couple finds themselves embroiled in one of the Yucatan’s most bizarre unsolved mysteries that took place fifteen years prior.”
If you watched The White Lotus on HBO Max, it definitely gives off similar vibes.
Anyway, both contain mysteries of various natures and a resort factors in, hence the names, but they’re two different things.
The Resort Movie Trailer
The Resort TV Show Trailer
The Watcher Movie and Series
We’ll start with the Watcher movie, a psychological thriller with Rear Window vibes that released in theaters on June 3, 2022. So far, it’s available to rent on YouTube, Prime Video, and YouTube.
It’s about a young American who moves to Bucharest with her boyfriend but notices a mysterious stranger watching their apartment from the building across the street. Is he the serial killer stalking the city?
But then there’s also the forthcoming The Watcher limited series on Netflix from Ian Brennan and Ryan Murphy. It’s about the unsolved Westfield Watcher case. The Broaddus family claimed that shortly after closing on the house at 657 Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey, they received creepy letters from someone who signed them “The Watcher.”
Luckily, other than receiving upsetting letters, no one was physically harmed in this incident. But it sparked imaginations and even a made-for-TV movie because what the Watcher wrote in those letters was chilling.
Watcher (2022) Movie Trailer
The Watcher TV Series Trailer
There isn’t a trailer for the series yet. The release date still indicates 2022 sometime, though. Hopefully, one will drop soon.
Check-In
What would you call movies and TV shows that share the same name? Or does doppelganger work?
Courtney Mroch is a globe-trotting restless spirit who’s both possessed by wanderlust and the spirit of adventure, and obsessed with true crime, horror, the paranormal, and weird days. Perhaps it has something to do with her genes? She is related to occult royalty, after all. Marie Laveau, the famous Voodoo practitioner of New Orleans, is one of her ancestors. (Yes, really! As explained here.) That could also explain her infatuation with skeletons.
Speaking of mystical, to learn how Courtney channeled her battle with cancer to conjure up this site, check out HJ’s Origin Story.
Maybe instead of homonyms, homonilms would work. Eh, nah. I like your straightforward doppelgangers better!
HOMONYM!!! Dangs it! I could NOT think of that word as I was writing! But I like your “homonilms”…CLEVER!!! It works!!! Maybe you just invented a new word!!!! lol (And then since books often share the same time, homonooks? lol)