Directed by: Ishana Night Shyamalan
Written by: Ishana Night Shyamalan
Starring: Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouéré, Oliver Finnegan
Rating: [1.5/5]
Building intrigue through marketing feels like half the battle in getting audience members to check out a film. Everything needs to be thrown at the wall and considered because of the number of distractions out there and one way that will certainly take care of this for horror fans is attaching Night Shyamalan to a project. The final result may not deliver what was promised but the premise will get those butts in those seats and we get exactly that with The Watchers. Instead of M. Night Shyamalan directing, we have his daughter Ishana Night Shyamalan and while there’s promise here, it proves to be one of the laziest films I have ever seen.
Still reeling from the impact she had on her mother’s passing years ago, Mina (Dakota Fanning) gets tasked, through her job, to deliver a valuable bird to a client. While on the way she ends up in a forest where her car breaks down and in the hope for some shelter, she finds an older woman who Mina must follow or faces the risk of losing her life. Now in some strange bunker called “The Coop” she learns that they must look out at this one-sided window as creatures observe them or else.
Dipping her toe in feature film directing like her father, Ishana Night Shyamalan seeks to make an impression through her filmmaking to help forge her own path and through mood-setting and visual style, she definitely has a strong eye. She creates this ominous circumstance for these characters and adequately utilizes the cinematography and sound to build on this mystery of these creatures and the specific rules these characters must follow if they wish to survive their experience here. In saying that, the positivity ends given this film’s horrid narrative blunders that did not leave me frightened but rather extremely irritated by its sheer laziness in telling this story.
If anyone held hope Ishana Night Shyamalan would not continue the lineage of lackluster screenplays, then one should not continue to hold their breaths because this film stands like the flimsiest piece of Swiss cheese. Nothing but holes all throughout with elements of the story playing out that one would think would even carry a smidgen of relevance that never receives a follow-up. Without trying to get into spoilers, of course, we have this bird that Mina carries with her as she was tasked with delivering it to a client. Now, one would think this valuable bird means a lot to Mina given she ensures to keep it with her throughout the entire film, even if it no longer makes sense to do so. That would make audience members think the bird will have some sort of relevance or a larger meaning it preps us for but the entire build up to why this bird, despite no reason for it to be kept around, comes into play drove my face deep into my hands. If this were a singular case in the narrative then it would be one thing, but so many elements of this film reference a key element and never receive a proper follow up that makes me think this film had to have faced heaps of studio interference.
This lackluster story plotting could make sense if the film wanted to linger in its mystery and allow for the audience members to decide what carried importance if not for the entirety of the third act being one complete dumping of exposition followed up by what Ishana Night Shyamalan intended to serve as emotional payoff. It left me completely mystified at the thinking behind the film, which leads me back to the original point. Building up to the anticipation of this film, everything regarding the plot lives in mystery. From the location of this coop, to the creatures we cannot see through this one-way mirror. In building this creepy atmosphere, the film then needed to somehow explain everything because the explanation of these creatures needed to occur if it were to end as the story demands but these developments have absolutely no foundation from the first two acts of the film. It gives off this laziness in trying to gradually build something and it felt like two movies mashed together.
Shoddy work from beginning to end with its narrative, The Watchers, despite its glimmers of positivity that saves it from an even lower score creates a situation where we have four characters we spend time with yet know nothing about and yet the film wants to have these emotional payoffs as if they mean anything to the audience given what little we have to go on. It proves this film operates as one of the biggest offenders of the old adage of “show don’t tell.” A completely irritating experience that completely wastes its premise and so desperately wants a twist that knocks us off our feet but ultimately feels like an embarrassing attempt at a novelty that no longer has the same impact.
Films with Josh 
