The Watchers, 2024.
Written and Directed by Ishana Night Shyamalan.
Starring Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouéré, Siobhan Hewlett, Alistair Brammer, Hannah Howland, Oliver Finnegan, Charles Camrose, Kya Brame, Anthony Morris, Shane O’Regan, Cara Steele, Shannon Antonia, Kofi De Graft Jordan, Diarmuid de Faoite, Ann Marie Horan, Seán T. Ó Meallaigh, Jacob Greenway, Jim Tighe, Andrea Bechis, Hannah Dargan, and Emily Dargan.
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.
In Ishana Night Shyamalan’s writing/directorial debut, The Watchers, the story surrounding some admittedly suspenseful sequences is either trying to do too much or not enough. Based on a book by A.M. Shine, there is an unrestrained fascination with the folklore of the titular creatures that simultaneously doesn’t make much of an impression beyond a generic humans vs monsters dynamic. Then there are the characters, who are either trauma dumping at lightning speed or stuck waiting forever for the script to tie together what we know about them into a semblance of an attempted theme, which, similarly, is rushed through in a third act saddled with awkward and unconvincing fake-out ending pacing that abruptly ends in the middle of trying to make a common point about humanity.
When the film is more of a chamber piece in these haunted foggy Irish woods, with a group of unlucky, stranded survivors holed up in a small abandoned single-room building, Ishana Night Shyamalan at least gets to wring out some mystery from not only the Watchers, off-camera, observing the humans (only) at night through a one-way mirror, but also interrogating how each person ended up here, who seems trustworthy, and what the twist might be if the director is going to follow in her revered father’s footsteps.
Among those individuals, the central focus lies on Dakota Fanning’s Mina, a grieving woman struggling to move on from her mother’s death, seemingly distant at work, bizarrely interested in playing dress-up and living a double-life when mingling with strangers, and tasked with delivering a special breed of parrot somewhere (I honestly couldn’t tell you, because the information here is either rapidly dispersed or dragged out in a manner that still doesn’t make an impression.) The point is that, as a poster board of missing persons informs us, the journey will take Mina into these mystical woods where her car suddenly breaks down, and she winds up with the aforementioned company.
Aside from a couple of jarring flashbacks, everything established about Mina almost doesn’t seem to matter anymore. The Watchers is now about a group living to see another day, led by Olwen Fouéré’s knowledgeable Madeline, who has been lost in the woods for the longest (roughly eight months) and has amassed a working knowledge of how the creatures operate, what they want, and a set of rules to follow to ensure survival through the night. Also in the group are Georgina Campbell’s Ciara and Oliver Finnegan’s Daniel; the former is worrying about her missing significant other, who seemingly got separated while scavenging for food, whereas the latter is increasingly becoming distrustful about Madeline and leaning towards escaping or dying trying alongside Mina.
For a few minutes, the case is made that everyone is breaking down, losing their minds, and finding themselves pitted against one another due to isolation and claustrophobia. However, this is a barely explored dynamic. Once Madeline explains that the Watchers only observe the characters at night through the mirror, it is somewhat disappointingly predictable what their motives are and where much of this is going. There is the additional element of a professor (John Lynch) who was previously researching in these woods on the Watchers, paving the way for that clunky third act and cluttered messaging regarding humanity.
There are occasional bright spots in the execution, with Ishana Night Shyamalan smartly avoiding showing the Watchers for a respectable amount of time, confident in the sound design team, and her knack for creating suspense and maintaining a sense of danger. The photography from Eli Arenson (whether capturing the atmospheric woods or the one-way mirror that’s practically impossible for the naked eye to pick up on, meaning that the characters look like they are interacting with doppelgängers) is occasionally striking and has fluid movements, whereas the score from Abel Korzeniowsk is aware of when to swell up and tap into the themes of humanity. Meanwhile, the creatures themselves, while not scary, are at least aesthetically interesting, shifting from scurrying across the woods on all fours to standing tall and lanky.
Despite some solid craftsmanship, The Watchers also never evolves from suspenseful into terrifying, leaving one fearing for the lives of each character. If anything, the strongest sequence in the film involves the potential survival or death of a character we don’t know, specifically because of what it says about the Watchers and their possible abilities. By the time the film leaves the forest and fails to justify an additional 20 minutes (not that the escape sequence was rewarding and satisfactory), admirably but unsuccessfully trying to tie elements of folklore and trauma together into a grand statement on the duality of good and evil residing in people, it settles in just how much of a narrative jumble one just watched. However, flashes of skill and immersion suggest that, in the future, Ishana Night Shyamalan could be a filmmaker to watch.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
