Director: Ishana Night Shyamalan
Writers: Ishana Night Shyamalan, A.M. Shine
Stars: Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouéré
Synopsis: A young artist gets stranded in an extensive, immaculate forest in western Ireland, where, after finding shelter, she becomes trapped alongside three strangers, stalked by mysterious creatures each night.
Ishana Night Shyamalan makes her feature debut behind the camera with The Watchers. The young filmmaker has limited experience, penning all the episodes of her father M. Night Shyamalan’s series Servant, but also directed a majority of the season. Yet, helming a studio film on a studio budget with minimal experience makes you wonder if nepotism continues to rule in the land known for its Angels.
While watching The Watchers, I couldn’t help but think, if you are old enough to remember, there was a time when there was nothing like the cinematic experience of an M. Night Shyamalan film. From the jaw-dropping The Sixth Sense to the all-consuming Unbreakable to the spine-tingling Signs, we took Shyamalan’s name for granted.
I’m happy to report that Ishana Night Shyamalan’s talent for storytelling means the pen hasn’t fallen far from the thriller master’s hand. The Watcher is an armrest-grabbing genre film that’s an entertaining and pulse-pounding example of an almost textbook combination of tone, style, and pace… until it isn’t.
The story follows Mina (The Equalizer 3’s Dakota Fanning), a young artist on the verge of turning thirty. Mina has turned to a life of loneliness. She is sullen, sad, and running away from her past. She has no family to speak of except for her sister, Lucy, but she keeps ignoring her phone calls because of their shared family tragedy.
Mina is now in Ireland, working at a local pet shop to earn some cash. Her boss is strange, getting quickly excited over a Meyer Lemon-colored Parrot he has sold. Her boss then asks Mina to deliver the special bird to a remote countryside location. Of course, she drives into an unmapped lush green forest somewhere in Western Ireland.
She leaves her car after it breaks down and her cell phone runs out of juice. She gets lost, taking her feathered friend with her. Then, she hears ominous noises: a rumbling of birds leaving their nests and a weathered old woman (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald’s Olwen Fouéré) telling her she has only a few seconds to get to a mysterious bunker with a large window or she will be killed by whatever ominous presence fills those woods.
The Watchers is an adaptation of the novel by the same name, from author A. M. Shine. Ishana Night Shyamalan wrote the script for the screen, with her father as the producer. As mentioned above, the first act of The Watchers is wonderfully paced, full of tension, and has a stylistically ominous mood. The filmmaking team know something about feature-creature thrillers: it can be more frightening when you cannot see the threat.
The younger Shyamalan creates a psychological atmosphere impossible to shake in the first 45 minutes that’s thrilling fun. The two generations of Shyamalan know that suspense is built from not knowing what is on the other side of that mirror because of the human condition of heightening our imaginations. This is also effective because there is no need to over-explain what is happening; just let the viewer enjoy the ride.
That’s where The Watchers makes its fatal mistake by turning to the Lost playbook, which makes zero sense. To avoid spoilers, it’s hard to explain why the film takes a nosedive into mediocrity. The film explores the backstory of the bunker, which becomes total cornball when it details how it was constructed in the middle of a dangerous location.
It’s the equivalent of trying to dig a hole in the middle of a lion’s den with two steaks tied around your waist and then surviving without a scratch. Then there is the issue of a key character’s office at a university, which, for reasons beyond explanation, has not been touched in nearly two decades for the sole purpose of moving the plot along. That leads to the most glaring issue: the third-act ending and excessive exposition explaining the apparent plot twist to the audience.
The gut feeling is that this is a source material issue, but it’s the director’s job to iron it out. However, the over-explanation in the third act is a ploy to set up a franchise of films for the future, which makes the error even more of a case of cinematic negligence. I will remain steadfast in backing this Shyamalan because, if you remember, even M. Night’s first film was not a Bruce Willis-led classic. With more experience and better source material, she has a bright future ahead of her.
