A Reel Review: THE WATCHERS

THE WATCHERS is the directorial debut of Ishana Night Shyamalan, daughter of famed filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan. It is a closed-quarters thriller, saturated with Irish mythology and packed with all of the tricks that M. Night has used over his career. How does it all work, let’s watch…

 

Mina (Dakota Fanning), gets lost in the thick Irish woods and is chased into an isolated bunker, occupied by three others (Georgina Campbell, Oliver Finnegan, Olwen Fouere). There, they must obey the strict rules set by the The Watchers; mysterious and deadly creatures roaming the woods. 

 

Directed by Ishana Night and based on the novel of the same name by A.M. Shine, THE WATCHERS spends a lot of its time setting up the all-important, plot-driving rules that the four captives must follow. Every night they must “present themselves” to The Watchers for observation (using some creepy two-way mirrors), and they must not be outside after dark or venture into the deep burrows where they live. Escape from the forest is impossible as daylight hours are short, and every path eerily seems to loop back. 

 

Mina, as the newcomer, looks to break some rules and this leads to consequences for them all. Mina herself is dealing with some old childhood trauma, and her new captivity brings all of her old fears back to the surface. Ishana Night is exploring themes of guilt, and for the most part it works. 

 

Ishana Night uses deep Irish mythology to build her creatures, and employs every old horror movie trick there is to give them dread. Jump scares and keeping the creatures out of sight for most of the film are old tricks that do work well here, although the film does get bogged down a lot with explaining the Irish myths that the creatures hail from. Cinematography and camera-work is very well done (being lost in the woods has never seemed more scary), and Ishana also gets excellent performances from her entire cast. The score by Abel Korzeniowski is haunting. 

 

The big question stuck on any Shyamalan film is, is there a twist? It’s no great spoiler to say there is. It’s not a gut-punch of a reveal, and it is dragged out forever by the laziest trope of all time (a goddamn video recording that dumps everything at once). But the film then moves into one or two more surprises that mostly make up for it…leading to a creepy ending that sticks and will have us looking over our shoulders at all times. THE WATCHERS has a few bumps in the night (too much exposition, dragged-out ending), but nothing that ruins it. For this Night, it is darkest before the dawn. 

 

BOTTOM LINE: Rent it