eerie forest

The Watchers – Review

In a world saturated with sequels and remakes, it’s refreshing to watch something that’s original. At least original to the screen, since The Watchers is based on a book by A.M. Shine and written for the screen and directed by Ishana Night Shyamalan. Yes, Night Shyamalan, as in daughter of M. Night Shyamalan, director of The Sixth Sense, Signs, and Split. But I love “nepo actors” Maya Hawke and Margaret Qualley, so why should I balk at a “nepo director”? The style and tone of this enthralling Irish-set horror woven together with fable and folklore is definitely akin (pun intended) to her father’s work, but I’d rather watch that than another superhero movie or a remake no one asked for.

The Watchers follows an American woman name Mina living in Ireland and working at a pet shop by day and somewhat dressing up at night to go out and pretend to be someone else, all to escape a grim past. One day she’s tasked with transporting a golden conure parrot to a zoo. Driving through a forest en route her radio and cellphone konk out and her car breaks down. Upon traipsing through the forest in search of help, her car disappears, and she stumbles upon three strangers surviving in a bunker called the Coop where they are knowingly watched by creatures through a two-way mirror every night.

It’s by no means a perfect film. Those familiar with her father’s work will expect a twist, and they’ll get one. Maybe earlier than expected, because it’s very poorly veiled. I figured it out immediately. But the conceit of the film is intriguing, offering up a variant of the “cabin in the woods” trope and throwing in some creature feature vibes for good measure. It would make a fun triple bill with her father’s The Village and Knock at the Cabin.

Dakota Fanning anchors the film with her melancholic performance as the reluctant hero, Mina. She’s flanked by Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouéré, and Oliver Finnegan as the three strangers. Despite having figured out the twist, I was still pulled in by the mystery of whether they would make it out of the forest and learning more about the creatures, especially since they’re inspired by European folklore.

Visually the film is sumptuous, thanks to all that gorgeous green Irish landscape. The forest that entraps them is an eerie place shrouded by shadows, mist, and dread by night, but almost charming by day, despite the horrors that lurk in the mysterious burrows. And thanks to the two-way mirror, there are incredible shots both inside the Coop and out.

The score by Abel Korzeniowski sets the mood perfectly. It sets up a few of the jump scares very obviously, but I enjoyed this – almost like I knew I was being toyed with, just as Mina realises she is being toyed with by the creatures. There is an attempt at paralleling their watched existence with our voyeuristic obsession with reality television, but this commentary never really goes anywhere. Nevertheless, I still found the Love Island parody (a DVD of one season being all they have to watch) hilarious.

I really liked the dynamic between the characters and how close they become. Although there is a lot of sadness in Mina’s story, there is ultimately a lot of sweetness too, and I found this to be a surprisingly heartwarming horror. After The Village and especially after The Lady in the Water, M. Night Shyamalan never seems to have regained the acclaim he had at the start of his career, and this first film of his daughter’s was quite lambasted too. But I really liked it, I still enjoy a lot of her father’s work, and I hope father and daughter continue collaborating in future.

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