Time: 102 Minutes
Age Rating: M – Supernatural themes
Cast:
Dakota Fanning as Mina/Lucy
Georgina Campbell as Ciara
Olwen Fouéré as Madeline
Oliver Finnegan as Daniel
Director: Ishana Night Shyamalan

I was curious about The Watchers. The main thing that had my attention was that it would be the debut film of M. Night Shyamalan’s daughter, Ishana Night Shyamalan. I found it to be quite underwhelming, but better than compared to its generally negative reception.

The central premise of The Watchers was intriguing, with the protagonist being trapped in a forest with a few other strangers, stalked by mysterious creatures, and forced to play by their rules. That being said, the script from the director herself (adapting the novel of the same name) really let the movie down, it really felt like a first draft. The problems are immediately seen in the dialogue, especially in regards to the exposition. Within the first 15-20 mins, characters talk about themselves in a very unnatural and inorganic way. Ironically enough, her father’s dialogue has received similar criticisms, although I usually find myself being more accepting of the awkwardness in some of his dialogue. So it says just how distracting the dialogue for The Watchers was. The exposition for the setup was especially clunky, the storytelling didn’t feel very natural and was doing far too much explaining. When mysteries were being revealed in the second half, I just found myself less and less invested, and it never had me emotionally engaged like the film was clearly aiming for me to me. As the movie moves towards the third act, any intrigue and mystery it had is lost, and the attempts at twists fall flat.

That being said, the film does benefit from a good cast. Dakota Fanning is good in the lead role, and Georgina Campbell and Olwen Fouéré are also good in supporting parts. Fouéré is saddled with delivering a lot of the clunky expositional dialogue, but deserves a lot of praise for delivering them as best as possible.

Ishana Night Shyamalan did well in helming her first film. I’ve seen some criticism that the direction is far too close to her father’s style, but I don’t really consider that a legit criticism. It is definitely similar with the style and the look, but it lends itself well to this kind of story (on top of being good). It is very well shot and has some good imagery, and makes good use of the forest environment. The scares don’t leave any kind of impact, but the creature designs for The Watchers were at least creative. There is a reasonably creepy atmosphere, helped in part by the score from Abel Korzeniowski.

The Watchers was a decent debut film with an intriguing premise, a solid cast, and good direction, but is overall a serviceable horror movie which suffers from a very clunky script. I’d like to see more movies from Shyamalan, she clearly has a good eye for directing, hopefully next time she’ll be working with a better script.