“The Watchers”: The Directorial Debut Of Shyamalan Jr. Resembles Her Father, For Better Or Worst | Review

It doesn’t seem easy to be the daughter of a successful director, trying to be a director herself. First, it’s challenging to be a woman director in Hollywood. The number of female directors in Hollywood is limited, and only two have so far managed to win an Oscar in the directing category (Kathryn Bigelow for “The Hurt Locker” andChloé Zhao for “Nomadland”). What is no less important is that almost immediately unflattering comparisons to father are expected, combined with allegations of nepotism (favoring relatives). Some women avoided this and produced worthy films, such as Sofia Coppola, while others were left behind.

Ishana Night Shyamalan’s challenge was more prominent, not only because she is a very young director in her 20s. Her father, M. Night Shyamalan, did indeed amaze the world with his excellent “The Sixth Sense” and embarked on an impressive career with many ups and downs. She is trying to act in the much-maligned horror genre and is starting her career with a film whose plot seems like something her father – the film’s primary producer and financier – would make and has even done to some extent. And if that’s not enough, at the same time, her father also directed “Trap,” in which another daughter of the family, Saleka Shyamalan, plays a very problematic role (subtly), which quite justifiably raises allegations that her father is trying to promote her singing, acting, or whatever career.

That’s why I had mixed expectations for “The Watchers,” the directorial debut of Ishana Night Shyamalan, with her father involved. I decided to pass on it when it hit theaters, and a few months later, I finished it by watching it at home. The bottom line is that although the young Shyamalan occasionally demonstrates her talent and creativity, the film itself has some fundamental flaws and is “too” reminiscent of her father’s work, for better but unfortunately also for worse.

The Plot Of The Watchers (Or: A Woman And A Parrot Enter The Woods)

The script for “The Watchers” was written by Ishana Shyamalan herself, based on the book of the same name by Irish author E.M. Shine. Our heroine is Mina (Dakota Fanning, who began her career as a wonder girl in “War of the Worlds,” “Hide and Seek” and the voice of Coraline in “Coraline” and has developed into a pretty good actress), who works in a pet store and carries a family trauma from her past.

One day, Mina is asked by her boss to transport a parrot to a specific place: A zoo near Belfast. Since Mina is in a horror movie, she chooses to do it through a dense and mysterious forest, which does not even appear on the map. Her car, which probably passed a test at a licensing institute that only accepts vehicles that will appear in horror movies, decides to stop in the middle of nowhere for no reason. Mina finds herself in the middle of a scary forest. She gets lost but finds a mysterious cabin. An elderly and slightly creepy-looking woman named Madeleine (Irish actress Olwen Fouéré, who also has a busy career in the theater) panics and invites her to enter the cabin, “The Coop,” before it’s too late.

In the cabin, Mina meets two other characters: Daniel (Oliver Finnegan, “Creeped Out”) is a somewhat strange young man, and Ciara (Georgina Campbell from the excellent “Barbarian,” “Bird Box: Barcelona,” “Lovely, Dark and Deep”, and more), who was in the cabin with her husband until he tried to escape and disappeared into the woods. Very quickly, Mina understands the rules of the game. In the mysterious forest, there are dangerous creatures called “The Watchers” (well, that’s the name of the movie), which are so-called because “they see everything.”

Like The Big Brother, For No Particular Reason

In this case, for some reason, the creatures gather outside the glass-walled, mirrored cabin every evening, watching the residents line up as if they were on a live broadcast of “Big Brother.” The residents try to “act accordingly” during the broadcast and occasionally entertain the creatures with an improvised story or scene that looks like it came out of a silly task on “Big Brother.”

It’s a rather strange and mostly unsatisfactory relationship, with the audience sometimes reacting with applause as if they were witnessing a scene of a cruel boycott of a character they’ve learned to hate on “Big Brother.” Viewers are unclear about why this procedure even started and what the creatures get out of it. Is the goal entertainment, headcount, creating a routine, or is it just dull, withn’t enough attractions, in the remote Northern Ireland forest?

However, “The Watchers” doesn’t focus on the rotten reality culture because there are enough other films that deal with voyeurism and compare the viewer to the character in the movie that turns the hero into its object. The problem is that according to the stories, these creatures are little more than viewers of reality shows. In addition to applauding every new tenant who enters the house, they will not hesitate to kill anyone who is in the forest after dark or goes too far (there are “point of no return” signs in the forest, which means that anyone who crosses them will not return) or visits the dark tunnels they built, because they cannot survive the sun’s rays.

Due to the limited number of characters, you can assume there will not be too many “eliminations” here, if we call them that. Maybe it is part of the trend of reality shows to spread themselves over an entire season, with a maximum of episodes for each elimination.

Let’s proceed with a trailer for “The Watchers” to get you in the mood. Happily, it won’t spoil the film for you too much:

Another Horror Movie About Monsters In The Woods, Supposedly

This is roughly the opening point of the film, which may remind you somewhat of “The Village” by someone named M. Night Shyamalan, the father, about the residents of a remote village in Pennsylvania who face monsters (supposedly, because most of Shyamalan’s films have a twist) in the woods that surround them.

“The Watchers” follows a formula that recalls not only the father’s works but also horror films set in the woods or apocalyptic films. We get certain disbelief from the heroine in the story about the monsters and the apparent danger to life that no one saw, perhaps because she had at some point seen “The Village” or “Knock at the Cabin,” directed by the father of the person who is directing her in the film, or other films with a similar idea of ​​monsters seemingly surrounding a closed and isolated compound, such as “10 Cloverfield Lane,” “Arcadian,” the “A Quiet Place” films, “Never Let Go” with Halle Berry, and more. In some of these films, the tension can increase if the viewer asks themselves what the real threat of the heroes is, or whether someone is interested in presenting a threat that does not exist.

You can mark some other aspects of films of this type. There is the character from the first scene who will return, seemingly or not, later in the movie. There is a violation of the rules that will lead to an increase in the monsters’ attempts, from a random knock on the door to an effort to break the glass, which is probably a metaphor for something. Of course, we will get to see recordings that someone made before his death and videotapes that the characters watch, which connect to the historical story of the cabin and the forest and show mainly that – thank God – we no longer have video recorders in the world.

A Mythology That Doesn’t Prove Itself

Look, there’s probably a reason why “The Watchers” is based on an Irish story, takes place in the United Kingdom, and features a predominantly British cast. Throughout the film, we realize that we might be dealing with some mythological creatures, perhaps related to Irish mythology.

The problem is that we understand this mainly through rather tedious dialogues in which the older woman, who probably knows a little too much, occasionally blurts out trivia and fun facts about the story of the place and the creatures. I haven’t read the book, but from the perspective of a horror viewer, there could have been a more interesting way to deliver the story. The dialogues are tedious and sometimes unreliable, hindering the viewer’s ability to connect with the story. Especially when you don’t fully understand the “laws” of the creatures, whether because of a failure in the script or the story itself or because the mythological story here is not complete or speaks to all viewers in the first place.

Folklore here could have been interesting, but how we understand it is far from impressive. So is its connection to theoretical issues that are also present in the film, for example, dealing with trauma, finding identities (it’s not for nothing that the heroine wears wigs or has a weird relationship with a parrot that talks to her), and even a few points about gender, because, after all, we are in 2025. It’s hard to say that these points connect sufficiently and certainly don’t contribute to the atmosphere of tension and the desire to find out what the hell is going on here, which are supposed to accompany films of this type.

There are some nice additions to the plot, like the names of the heroine and her sisters, which are the names of the best friends from Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” Still, we quickly realize that this is primarily an “Easter egg” that has nothing to do with anything. It’s okay if in films like “Abigail” and “The Invitation” we see dozens of references to vampire films, but here that’s not the point because we quickly realize that the story here is different.

Beyond revealing the characteristics of the “monsters” and the mythology behind them, there are several twists towards the end of the film related to the history of the place and the connection of some of the characters to it. After all, this is a Shyamalan family film. Instead of improving the film, I felt that these revelations hurt it because some seemed too disconnected and didn’t create the “wow” feeling, mainly because the inner world the film built wasn’t believable and tight enough.

Did The Apple Fall Too Close To The Tree?

It seems that Ishana Night Shyamalan learned something from her father in her short career, which included a role as an assistant director (on her father’s terrible “Old” and the more plausible “Knock at the Cabin”), co-producer and director of several episodes of the “Servant” series produced by her father, and even directing some of her sister’s music videos.

“The Watchers” includes some beautiful aspects of filmmaking, such as the cinematography that takes us into the atmosphere of the eerie and isolated forest. The monster designs are undoubtedly impressive at times and show that the director, who likes to draw in her free time, has a somewhat developed visual sense. It’s a shame that one of the plot decisions regarding one aspect of the monsters prevents us from seeing them in most cases because we get something else that looks a bit like other characters in the film.

It’s clear that Ishana Night Shyamalan definitely has talent and a sure “hand,” to the extent that we use hands in directing. It’s possible to identify several other influences of hers, such as the Japanese manga/anime artist Hayao Miyazaki (“Spirited Away,” “Howl’s Moving Castle”), whom Shyamalan has testified to her admiration for. She was also influenced by horror films she has seen since childhood, because it’s likely that in the Shyamalan family’s house, members connect with this genre.

The problem is that it’s not certain that mixing work with family is such a great idea. “They Watchers,” the young director’s debut film, is a little too reminiscent of the works of M. Night Shyamalan, and I’m not sure that’s a compliment this time. The film corresponds with the culture of reality and voyeurism, including reflexively (the reality series that the characters watch in the cabin) – it doesn’t seem as if the young director brought a voice of her own yet. Everything is a little too “Shyamalanic,” and maybe, as of now, her father knows how to do it better.

Besides, it’s hard to say that “The Watchers” is too compelling. It has a few tense scenes, but their number is limited. I didn’t find it scary, in terms of the general atmosphere or the creatures (unlike, for example, the problematic “Azrael,” which we wrote about on the site not long ago), and the scares that do exist mainly were pretty predictable jump scares. In other words, another film aimed at a relatively young audience – its rating in the United States was PG-13, meaning that adult supervision is only required up to the age of 13 – which I think could have been improved if it had dared to become more extreme because the foundation is there.

The Complexity Of Uncomplex Characters

The characters lack the emotional depth and development we expect, which is a shame because we saw, for example, that Georgina Campbell is an excellent actress who gets a little lost with a bland and annoying character.

The main character’s preoccupation with the past seems artificial and far from contributing anything too significant to the current situation, even if it is to Dakota Fanning’s credit that she does her best in a quiet but enjoyable performance.

“The Watchers” is far from a cinematic disaster and has very reasonable, even enjoyable, moments. It has interesting parts; the cast does a good job for the most part, and I even tried to think during the film what exactly is going on here. On the other hand, beyond the resemblance to the father’s works (disappointing in itself, but not something you should judge a film by a young filmmaker solely on its own merits), the feeling is that the film loses momentum very quickly, the plot revelations and twists are conveyed in a dry and not always believable way, and there is no scene here that can be said to accompany me for the coming weeks.

The bottom line is that “The Watchers” has been far from impressive: it grossed only $33 million at the box office, barely covering its $30 million budget (reportedly, M. Night Shyamalan financed the film himself and sold it to Warner Bros. for that amount). Critics have been relatively negative about the movie, and audience sentiment seems mixed at best.

Should You Watch The Watchers?

Family relationships are complicated when it comes to young filmmakers. On the one hand, the closeness of the family gives the film enough PR, and thanks to the fact that the father himself is also the producer, it was able to work with an impressive budget for a debut film and a decent cast. On the other hand, every shot or scene will be measured with a magnifying glass, especially if it’s the daughter of a filmmaker about whom opinions are divided. While it’s unfair to judge a young filmmaker by the level of resemblance to her father, who in this case probably mostly hurts her, what can you do when it’s hard to separate the identity of the filmmakers from a film, especially if it’s a family that has already done one or two things in the world of horror. It’s possible that critics and audiences would have “forgiven” the young director – who, by the way, gives the impression from the interviews of a charming person with cinematic knowledge and passion – if the result had been more successful.

The first thing I did after finishing “The Watchers” was to see the young director’s subsequent films, only to discover no announcements about her following projects yet. This could be a positive because time could undoubtedly contribute to her development after the first film that showed talent but maybe came a little too early in her solo career. It will be interesting to see if, in the following films, M. Night Shyamalan will bring a little more “positive cheek” and her “inner self” if we sit for a moment in the chair of the judge who gives a red but is happy to discover that the candidate did move on to the next stage of the competition.

At most, we will wait for the next film about the father or the next song by the sister. Wait, does anyone know what M. Night Shyamalan’s wife does for a living?

The Watchers – Everything You Need To Know

Year: 2024

Director: Ishana Night Shyamalan

Cast: Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouéré, Oliver Finnegan

Screenplay: Ishana Night Shyamalan (based on a story by A.M. Shine)

Length: 102 minutes

Country of production: United States, Ireland

Language: English

Release date (United States): 7.6.2024

Budget: Approx. $30 million

Worldwide Gross: Approx. $33 million (according to Box Office Mojo)

MPAA rating (Parents Guide): PG-13

Reviews score:

IMDB: 5.7

Rotten Tomatoes: 32%

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