THE WATCHERS (2024) – Decent first-time effort by Ishana but could have been better
Rating: ⭐⭐ 1/2

On the surface, The Watchers looks like yet another entry in the horror genre. The title is familiar sounding (not to be mistaken for the TV series The Watcher or the 2022 movie Watcher), and its poster showing a bunch of people in a cabin deep inside a forest implies yet another “cabin in the woods” tale of horror. The thing that made this stand out above the mundane for me was the name associated with the production. This is written and directed by Ishana Night Shyamalan who is the daughter of M. Night Shyamalan. The Watchers is her directorial debut in the genre that that made her daddy so famous! I was keen to see what she can do and if she could bring something as innovative and creative as her father did with his movies.
Short answer … No. But, on the positive side, Ishana does show a lot of potential for a first-time effort. The Watchers is rated PG-13 so we would not expect to be bombarded by the gratuitous violence or sex and nudity which so many horror movies seem to relish in. Instead of the gore and applying the usual jump scares, she relied a lot on atmospheric effects to bring in the scares. Ishana does have a good eye and captures many moments beautifully, whether it’s street scenes in town, breathtaking birds eye view shots of the countryside or the dark claustrophobic confines of the forest. She also had some good masterful visual moments utilising a big mirror and having her main character Mina (played by Dakota Fanning) standing up close to it. She also managed to keep the mystery and guessing game going well for the first half of the movie. However, what eventually let this project down is the story and concept. The explanation on the monsters that haunted our cast of characters and the twists at the end were a bit on the side of being preposterous. The final act will either make or break this sort of movies and I am afraid in this case, I wasn’t a fan of it.
Ishana also needs to improve on her casting choice and directing skills to bring the best out of her actors. Dakota Fanning is a fantastic actress and one of my personal favourites. However, she came across looking lost and uninterested throughout the movie. It was a very one-dimensional character which is a shame because I know Dakota can be so much better than this. The rest of the cast were also forgettable. The impulse to compare this with M Night Shyamalan’s work is inevitable and we can see some similarities and influence from Ishana’s father’s work here. Perhaps she can shake off the connection in her next project and show us something that has a more distinctive style of her own and try something bolder.