M. Night Shyamalan’s youngest daughter, Ishana Shyamalan, takes the stage with a half-baked mix of gothic fantasy and minimalist horror in The Watchers.
Why does no one ever see the bright side to Hollywood nepo babies? Sure, it’s a problem when talented creatives lose out on opportunities to others because their family name has weight in show business. But on the upside, the legacy of that name is promised to be preserved for decades to come! Indie dramedies will always have a raspy-voiced smarmy character while Maya Hawke steps in front of the camera for her dad Ethan. Brooklyn Beckham will take up the storied mantle of “smoldering attractive person in photographs” that his dad David and mom Victoria carried with such a burden. And it’s comforting to know that M. Night Shyamalan’s long and consistent history of miscalculated thrillers will continue on into the next generation.
Ishana Shyamalan, M. Night’s youngest daughter, takes a swing at the big screen by adapting A.M. Shine’s 2022 gothic novel The Watchers. Set near the quiet Irish town of Galway, Shyamalan follows distant sketch artist Mina (Dakota Fanning) as she’s asked to deliver a rare bird via cross-country roadtrip. That takes her into a mysterious forest where her car breaks down, her cell phone doesn’t work, and some monstrous voices follow her around. She’s soon “rescued” by Madeline (Olwen Fouéré), who takes Mina to a concrete shelter where she and two other strangers (Georgina Campbell and Oliver Finnegan) have been kept prisoner by those haunting creatures they call “watchers.” Though the trio adhere to strict rules made their creepy captors, Mina tries to find a way out of the mind-altering forest before she loses her mind.
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Descriptions of The Watchers book peg it as a “gothic horror novel” and to Shyamalan’s credit, she meets that expectation on a visual level. It helps to have the vast Irish woodlands to frame all the story’s creeping dread, with cinematographer Eli Arenson (Lamb) doing well making the trees and horizons look like a never-ending prison cell. Shyamalan knows the sound design tricks to make a few good jump scares and can build tension well enough by holding on the dark spaces surrounding her characters as they wait to see what horrors lurk in the shadows.
The movie has its moments in a visual sense but, in true Shyamalan fashion, its script is its achilles heel. Story-wise, The Watchers is a routine dark fairy tale that thinks it has mystery in teasing what the titular “watchers” are and why are they keeping people prisoner. That “mystery” is created merely by vague ominous sayings about what the monsters do if Mina stays out after dark and how the other captors make due in their shared imprisonment. The difference between “mysterious” and “vague” is crucial to the tension of a horror movie and the young Shyamalan hasn’t found it yet.
Then there’s the third act twist brought about shockingly illogical oversight on our characters’ part before opening the floodgates for exposition that is less revelatory and more obligatory. The dull, undercooked storytelling isn’t helped by weak creature designs and a race through the woods that just unceremoniously ends. You think the movie is about to end at the 75-minute mark before stretching out for another 25 minutes of more exposition and ANOTHER half-baked climax that got more giggles out of my screening audience than shock or stunned silence.
It almost makes you wish there was some of M. Night’s cringe-inducing dialogue or his still-impressive camerawork that locks the audience into tension even as it moves. At least those make the worst Shyamalan movies partially memorable. Ishana clearly hasn’t found her distinct cinematic language yet, betting the success of The Watchers on atmosphere when it should be filling in the blanks of a boring story.
Who watches “The Watchers?”
The young Shyamalan may have a starting skill for directing actors, though. Dakota Fanning delivers an intimidating gaze of skepticism. Fanning does well turning that look into fear as the movie goes along and her eyes widen to the terror she’s trapped in. Olwen Fouéré does a fine job being the ominous elder spouting exposition like an aging Wiccan, but never feels like the human threat Shyamalan wants for the story. Georgina Campbell and Oliver Finnegan fill out their roles well enough as the flower and fury of the group, though given how Campbell already proved to be a good final horror girl in Barbarian, she feels the most wasted of the cast.
The bottom line.
Though she has her father’s name (both by birth and in the producer credits), Shyamalan wisely didn’t try to make an M. Night movie with his trademark stilted dialogue and stiff camera work. She has two clear influences in her filmmaking: the gothic fantasy of Guillermo del Toro and the minimalist folklore of Robert Eggers. Those are high marks to reach for and unfortunately, The Watchers doesn’t do more than be a weak imitation of both directors’ styles awkwardly mushed together.
This might’ve made for an engrossing short film if she trimmed down the exposition and made the monsters less generic. Alas, setting her up with her dad’s backing and a major motion picture platform (nice to see you, New Line Cinema) means she has to hit a mark she can’t quite reach yet. That’s not ruling out that Ishana can’t develop her craft with smaller-scale movies and figure out on her own how to flesh-out a story or create her own style of haunting visuals. Or on the flip side, the Shyamalan name becomes a dynasty of awkwardly-written, poorly executes thrillers for decades to come.
The Watchers is now playing in theaters everywhere. You can watch the trailer here.
Images Courtesy of Warner Bros. Read more articles by Jon Winkler here.
REVIEW RATING
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The Watchers - 4/10
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