Directed By Ishana Shyamalan

Starring – Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouere

The Plot – This forest isn’t charted on any map. Every car breaks down at its tree line. Mina’s (Fanning) is no different. Left stranded, she is forced into the dark woodland only to find a woman shouting, urging Mina to run to a concrete bunker. As the door slams behind her, the building is besieged by screams. Mina finds herself in a room with a wall of glass, and an electric light that activates at nightfall, when the Watchers come above ground. These creatures emerge to observe their captive humans and terrible things happen to anyone who doesn’t reach the bunker in time.

Rated PG-13 for violence, terror and some thematic elements.

THE WATCHERS | Official Trailer (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

In her debut directorial effort, Shyamalan has capably followed in the blazed trail of her father, while adapting an overwhelmingly weird-but-endearing concept that feels most valuable in the air of ambiguity that alludes to all things being possible in a story shrouded in so much mystery. For my money, the film is at its best and most promising when we the audience learn and experience alongside Mina, with not only so many strangely inexplainable things happening, but also a firmly defined atmospheric uneasiness that speaks volumes to the kind of distinctly unique brand of off-beat horror that only a Shyamalan can capably conjure, and with Ishana eliciting a presentation as moody and atmospheric as the Irish countryside it depicts, utilizes a signature style in capture that proves she’s done a lot of learning to this moment. While the scares are unfortunately limited, the tension and ominousness of the established forest within this world produces some thrilling chills that do occasionally catch you off-guard, but without the poorly timed and predictable jump scares that this critic has come to loathe from contemporary horror. Beyond the concept, ‘The Watchers’ has great interpretive value in the depths of being one giant allegory for grief, and how duality can spawn someone so unfamiliar with a past that continuously goes unresolved. This categorizing might sound like a spoiler to the film, but it’s essentially just one of the many layers it sheds within its tumultuous execution, and while the film took me in directions that I honestly didn’t care to explore, the possibility of something psycho-cerebral could’ve achieved a far deeper significance to this seemingly otherworldly forest, especially as one not as dependent on the abundance of twists that either make or break an audience’s perspective towards a Shyamalan film. Lastly, while the characterization falls suspect to some questionable directions in their development, the performances are actually quite remarkable, especially in the decorated duo of Fanning and Fouere, who manage to keep your attention through some sluggish storytelling. Fanning has always had an emotional depth years ahead of her initial childhood breakthrough, but it’s rewarding to see how that has transitioned to her work as an adult actress, and in Mina, Fanning thoroughly explores the tenderness and vulnerability of her character’s torturous past, with timid deliveries and corresponding isolation in loneliness that makes her the only character who I was even remotely invested in. As for Fouere, it’s more of the same stoic mystique that she brought to 2022’s ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, but this time with an intensified delivery that stands out for all kinds of reasons. While the dialogue decides to use her as an exposition device, Fouere embraces the occasion with an undeterred commitment to craft that intentionally feels unique to her trio of on-screen co-stars, in turn serving as the manifestation of a long-term stay inside of mirror box.

NEGATIVES

Though Shyamalan’s father has had mixed results with a career that isn’t afraid to take chances, Ishana gets off to an unfortunately disappointing start while steering a film that continuously attempts to be too many things at once. For starters, it’s surprisingly a fairytale disguised as a horror film, which will undoubtedly disappoint audiences seeking one particular thing out of the film, but beyond that a series of vicious tonal shifts in the material that leave the direction feeling disjointed between its respective halves. In fact, the film often feels like the varying visions of two distinctly disputing directors, and while one could assume that could work wonders towards the ambiguity in unraveling the film’s mystery, it ultimately results in the execution exhausting itself in a 97 minute excursion that grows tedious by the film’s halfway point. This leads to the element that every moviegoer comes to see in a Shyamalan film, the mystery, which joins the ranks of recent M. Night failures where the concept far exceeds the effectiveness of the execution. To be fair, I certainly didn’t see where the film was taking me with its big reveal or reveals, but in stacking one on the other, the surprises become convoluted by such clumsy delivery, resulting in a conflict and framing device that I truly couldn’t of cared less about by film’s climax. Coherence isn’t quite an issue, as I was able to capably follow what the script was continuously dishing out at me, but the sequencing and pacing of these developments offered very little time to breathe and properly register the extent of their offerings, making ‘The Watchers’ a bloated mess that was only surpassed this year by Matthew Vaughn’s ‘Argyle’. So the twists and creativity don’t work, but even worse the dialogue feels completely unnatural to the exposition and background developments that they constantly summon, resulting in deliveries that feel like the very definition of spoon-fed sentiments. While films aren’t always able to find believable ways of attaining necessary information, the manner of their methods here completely halt the progress of the film and storytelling in order to conveniently answer everything about this setting and its monsters, resulting not only in the obliteration of subtlety, but also in the unavoidable realities of convenience, which can’t even be answered by one of the many aforementioned twists that reshape the dynamic, every fifteen minutes or so. In addition, outside of the minimal attempt to properly flesh out Mina’s backstory before abruptly placing her into this parallel universe, the rest of the characters are uninteresting at best, and annoying at worst, crafting unappealing protagonists that make it a chore to care in their respective plight. As previously mentioned, Fouere’s Madeline has the unfortunate task of simply eliciting information for the audience, but Ciara and Daniel, played by Campbell and Oliver Finnegan, respectively, are these one-note supporting characters, with the former making stupid decisions to appraise convenience, and the latter eliciting these laughably awful facial registries that comedically took me out of every dramatic moment in which the camera chooses to focus on him. Characters are a major part to a film with a concept as unfamiliar as this one to audience interpretation, as they’re the humanity that constantly hangs in the distance, and while the dialogue attempts to appraise backstory to each of their designs, I never truly felt like I got a firm grasp of them as compelling protagonists, leaving it to dramatically shortchange the stakes, which made M. Night films like ‘Signs’ or ‘The Sixth Sense’ a vital commodity.

OVERALL
‘The Watchers’ and particularly Ishana Shyamalan proves that the apple doesn’t fall far from the artistic tree, especially in that she conjures the best and worst of M. Night sensibilities that have made him the most divisive director of the 21st century. While Ishana does take ample opportunity in the speculative ambiguity of the movie’s mystery, the convoluted execution, conflicting genre-clashing, and spoon-fed exposition robs it of what little suspense and thrills it’s able to properly garner, proving that if an ambitious filmmaker flounders in the woods, it doesn’t make a sound.

My Grade: 4/10 or D