The Watchers spoiler-free review – Can’t see the woods for the trees

It’s hard to discuss The Watchers, the directorial debut of Ishana Night Shyamalan without mentioning the filmmaking legacy that she’s part of. As the daughter of famed director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs, Knock at the Cabin), there’s a certain level of expectation that comes with doing, well, anything. Especially considering the involvement here of Shyamalan Sr., who acts as producer on The Watchers. However, Ishana is both writer on the dark folklore-infused horror tale, adapting The Watchers from a 2022 novel by A.M. Shine, as well as director. So we are left to ponder what the trademark Shyamalan twist will be: is Ishana just another Hollywood nepo-baby, or is there a solid directing future on the cards? 

In The Watchers, Dakota Fanning plays Mina, a dissatisfied American working in a pet store in Ireland. During a contrived road trip to deliver a bird, Mina gets lost in a foreboding old forest after her car and phone stop functioning, and is rescued by Madeline (Olwen Fouéré), who whisks her away to the safety of the Coop – a box-like building in the heart of the forest consisting of one room and a wall of windows. There, Mina meets two more strangers who share her predicament, Ciara (Georgina Campbell) and Daniel (Oliver Finnegan). All four captives must stand in front of the windows to be watched by sinister creatures stalking the forest after dark. 

Madeline lays out the ground rules for surviving their nightmare situation: be back in the Coop by sunset, never open the door at night, never turn your back on the windows, and never explore the burrows in the forest, lest The Watchers take you for good. 

From this point on, it will be impossible to discuss the story without giving the whole thing away. Suffice to say, Mina has to accept Madeline’s rules while plotting an escape, and deal with the occupants of the Coop, all of whom are teetering on the brink of madness due to either their circumstances or the sanity-testing location itself. 

The first part of The Watchers is beautifully filmed, with the atmospherically ominous forest looming over everything that takes place. Clearly, it’s very thoughtful in terms of its cinematography choices, with clever and striking use of camera focus and mirror shots. Unfortunately, there’s not much else that The Watchers has going for it. 

All of the acting is surprisingly wooden, with stilted dialogue delivered by characters that seem wholly disconnected from what’s going on. There’s a lot of very interesting human drama you can create when four strangers are trapped in an impossible situation, but none of the captives, including Mina herself, seem to discuss anything other than awkward exposition. There is no investment in any of the leads; no reason for you to care, not even to worry if they’ll be killed off. 

Most of the time, viewers will just be wondering about the plot holes, of which there are plenty. By the time the third act attempts some answers, which really only serve to dig up more questions, you’re left with more frustration than anything else. The premise of who the mysterious Watchers are and their motivations for keeping people in a live reality show would be a compelling story… if it had been seeded earlier in the film. Instead, the big reveal (which consists of several other, smaller reveals), happens too late for the audience to care about any of it. 

This creates the impression of two films that have been badly stitched together. On the one hand, there’s a compelling human horror story of claustrophobic confinement. On the other, there’s a dark fairy tale of scary creatures roaming the woods. Neither of these narratives live up to their potential, and neither are particularly frightening. It may look pretty moody (literally), but The Watchers lacks any sense of underlying dread or urgency, the main components for any horror film. 

It may not be fair to compare Ishana Night Shyamalan’s work with her father’s, as she’s only at the start of her career, but the comparison is impossible to avoid considering they are working in a similar genre with a similar stylistic approach, on top of sharing a history and name. So if you had to place The Watchers on a Shyamalan quality scale, it’s closer to the muddled and poorly acted Old than say, The Village, and a far cry from compelling, character-driven works like Signs and Split.

The Watchers is in cinemas as of 7 June 2024.