Family Business
How far from the tree does the apple really fall?
The Watchers
Director: Ishana Night Shyamalan • Writer: Ishana Night Shyamalan, based on the novel by AM Shine
Starring: Dakota Fanning, Olwen Fouéré, Georgina Campbell, Oliver Finnegan, John Lynch
USA • 1hr 42mins
Opens Hong Kong June 6 • IIB
Grade: B-
Answer: The apple’s still on the damn tree.
Let’s just get this out of the way right off the bat. Ishana Night Shyamalan’s first feature film is going to go under a super-powerful microscope – more powerful than most first-time directors will be subjected to. For one, she’s M Night Shyamalan’s daughter and for whatever reason his work inspires outsized levels of vitriol. Jeez, you’d think he was a chick. For another, she’s a chick. For a third, she’s not even a white chick. The audacity of her to tap daddy for some help (M Night’s Blinding Edge pictures produced). I legitimately feel and fear for Ishana.
Because The Watchers (suddenly credited as The Watched in the UK and Ireland) is very on brand for the Shyamalans, and Ishana has clearly picked up a few tricks from her father (she worked second unit on Old and directed an episode of Servant) about building atmosphere, setting mood and getting creepy. The story starts with a hiker, clearly lost in a dense, spooky Irish forest that seems to have no way out. It doesn’t appear on any known maps, and once you’re caught there after sundown, you stay there – unless you get sucked down a hole. Which this guy does. Okay then.
Mood and atmosphere be damned, The Watchers is an “And Then” movie. Adapted from author AM Stine’s debut gothic horror novel rooted in Irish folklore (which I have not read), it’s ultimately more interesting before it reveals its mystery than after. But first: Mina (The Equalizer 3’s Dakota Fanning) is an American in Galway steadfastly not dealing with her 15-year-old parental baggage trauma. She works at a pet shop, and gets lost in the mystery forest during a drive to Belfast to deliver a rare bird to a zoo. But her car breaks down, so she takes the bird and starts walking, promptly getting lost. And then her car disappears. And then it starts getting dark. And then she hears weird noises. And then she sees a woman, Madeline (the utterly glorious Olwen Fouéré, 2022’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Northman), offering her a place to hide from the monsters. And then she finds herself trapped in what Madeline calls the Coop with two other strangers, Ciara (Georgina Campbell, Barbarian) and Daniel (Oliver Finnegan). And then the unseen Watchers study them through a one-way mirror at night. And then she tries to get away… You get the idea.
Unfortunately The Watchers has a low-key “Aha!” twist reminiscent of M Night at his most laboured, and though it may have been lifted from the source material it doesn’t serve the film terribly well. Added to which the script, also by Shyamalan, is painfully expository in its dialogue. Who ever talked all the way through car trouble with the exception of an angry “Shit!” if you burnt yourself? Mina makes sure to tell us every step of the way what’s going on. It’s as if Shyamalan doesn’t trust us to figure out what she’s just shown us – much of it pretty on-the-nose imagery. Really? A caged bird? And Ciara was dumb purely to move the plot forward, always a cheap trick.
Even still, Shyamalan does a great job with negative space and broken silences, and there’s no denying she’s got an eye for horror imagery and for building eerie tension. The Watchers, either by design or by budget limitations, are truly unsettling, and at the risk of perpetuating gender binaries, Shyamalan’s less gory, more feminine psychology hints at a fresh perspective for the genre; there’s as much a whiff of Jennifer Kent (The Babadook) here as of dad. The Watchers is more guilty of being forgettable than inept, and there’s enough style and POV on display here to genuinely be interested in where Ishana goes next. Until then, is it wrong of me to still want to see her dad’s upcoming Trap more? — DEK