This summer, one Shyamalan simply isn’t sufficient. While M. Night Shyamalan has the concert-set thriller Trap due out this August, his daughter Ishana Night Shyamalan has struck first blood with The Watchers, a supernatural horror offering based on A.M. Shine’s breakthrough novel. Though she’s worked as second unit director on her father’s recent films Old and Knock At The Cabin, while also writing and directing a handful of episodes for the Apple TV+ series Servant, this is Ishana’s first time writing and directing for the big screen. Her directorial debut displays promise from the outset with a tantalizing hook and properly spooky atmosphere but eventually comes undone with inconsistent pacing and telegraphed third-act developments.
The Watchers centers around Mina (Dakota Fanning), a young American stuck in the haze of her troubled past while working at a pet shop in Ireland. Tasked with delivering a prized parrot to a customer hours away from the store, Mina finds herself lost in the deep Irish forest with a broken down car. Soon night falls and worrisome noises draw her to the only building in the area and a woman called Madeline (Olwen Fouéré), who is standing by the open door offering Mina shelter. The situation doesn’t get any less strange when Madeline demands that Mina stand with her, along with two other lost forest dwellers Ciara (Georgina Campbell) and Daniel (Oliver Finnegan), in front of a one way mirror so the quartet can be observed by an unseen entity. Can the four of them find their way out of the woods before the creatures they call “The Watchers” penetrate their bunker?
Like her father’s most memorable movies, Ishana Night Shyamalan’s The Watchers has a high-concept premise perfect for an enticing teaser trailer, which fittingly debuted before fellow Warner Bros release Dune: Part Two earlier this year. From a marketing perspective, it’s fortunate that the clip features the most accomplished stretch of filmmaking front-and-center. The four members of “The Coop”, the characters’ name for the enclosure they find themselves in, kill time playing records and DVDs until the sun goes down and ritual dictates that they gather in front of the glass to be “watched”. It’s a juxtaposition between mundane domesticity and paranormal ceremony previously employed by similarly grabby entertainments like Lost and 10 Cloverfield Lane.
It’s never an easy thing to follow up on such a persuasive pitch with a narrative that cleverly unpacks the opening gambit and that’s where The Watchers predictably falters. The more we learn about the titular observers, the less interesting the story at large becomes. Instead of focusing on the troublesome and tense aspects of sharing a confined living space with three other strangers, Shyamalan decides to press forward with the more generic horror elements of her tale instead. It’s not necessarily that the reveal of who The Watchers are is disappointing but as a director, Shyamalan can’t exactly figure out where she wants to take things from there. Once the bird flies the proverbial coop, it doesn’t land in territory we haven’t seen dozens of times before.
That’s not to say that the film doesn’t have appealing aspects. It’s exceptionally well shot by cinematographer Eli Arenson, who beautifully captures both the haunting beauty of the Irish countryside and the chilly interiority of The Coop. The shots of Mina and the others interacting with the one way mirror are aided by gorgeous computer-generated effects that gorgeously render reflections that point to the movie’s theme of doubles and competing halves of one’s identity. It’s also nice to see Dakota Fanning in a starring role again after a smaller part in last year’s The Equalizer 3. Even if her character’s personal journey isn’t quite as interesting as the supernatural elements at play, Fanning makes Mina a protagonist with whom it’s easy to sympathize. The Watchers isn’t the strongest start for Ishana Night Shyamalan but there are still seeds of a promising storyteller to watch for.
Score – 2.5/5
New movies coming this weekend:
Playing exclusively in theaters is Inside Out 2, an animated sequel starring Amy Poehler and Phyllis Smith following the personified emotions of a teenage girl as new feelings like Anxiety and Envy enter the mix.
Screening at Cinema Center is Tuesday, a fantasy drama starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Lola Petticrew about a mother and her terminally ill daughter as they’re visited by a size-altering macaw that’s the personification of death.
Streaming on Hulu is Brats, a documentary about the Brat Pack, a group of young actors who frequently appeared together in coming-of-age films in the 1980s, and the impact on their lives and careers.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup