The Doctor’s Diagnosis: C
The Watchers is the directorial debut of Ishana Night Shyamalan, daughter of M. Night Shyamalan. If you didn’t know that going into the film, you would likely assume that this was made by M. Night himself or someone trying to copy him because, for better or worse, this feels like a Shyamalan film. More specifically, this feels like a Shyamalan film from the 2000s (Lady in the Water being the most direct comparison). It looks great and has interesting ideas, but is never able to bring things together into a coherent or satisfying whole. There is a good film to be made from this material, but The Watchers isn’t really it.
Set in Ireland, our lead is Mina (played by Dakota Fanning), who works at a pet shop and is tasked with delivering a bird to a zoo across the country. Her car breaks down in the middle of the forest and, instead of doing something silly like walking along the road, she decides to walk straight into the forest. She finds a strange building occupied by three other lost people led by an old woman named Madeline (played by Olwen Fouéré), who explains that they are trapped in the forest and must not leave the building at night because there are dangerous creatures in the forest. Additionally, the building has a glass wall so that the creatures can observe them and they must be available for these observation periods in order to keep the monsters satisfied. What is happening and what are the monsters? The film will answer at least one of those questions.
On the positive side, The Watchers is a very well shot. Ishana definitely seems to have learned filmmaking from her father because, as nonsensical as his films could sometimes be, M. Night’s work always looks good. The Watchers creates a solid sense of atmospheric dread from the skillful filming of the vast forest and takes full advantage of the setting in the Irish countryside. The wide shots of the forest descend into the eerie nights in the woods and claustrophobic feeling of the cabin, creating a mix of contrasting shots that draws the audience into this world.
The performances are all serviceable enough, if not particularly memorable. Dakota Fanning is a solid avatar for the audience; she may not be playing the smartest character in the world, but her inherent likeability brings the character more empathy than would be possible with a lesser actress. Olwen Fouéré is also suitably ominous as Medeline. If you don’t recognize Fouéré by name, you may still know her as the creepy old lady in Mandy. Or as the creepy old lady in The Northman. Or as the creepy old lady in Tarot. Or as Sally Hardesty in that awful Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie that Netflix shit out in which she boldly played Sally as a creepy old lady. As much as I kid about her unfortunate typecasting, she is a highly accomplished theater actress in the United Kingdom and France and if you can pull off playing both Hamlet and Lady Macbeth, you deserve a few paychecks from Hollywood late in your career.
Unfortunately, then there is the script. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a movie that’s this filled with awkward exposition but still somehow fails to adequately explain its core premise. Without spoiling anything, the film goes into fairy tale territory as it progresses (similar to Lady in the Water) and, while there are some interesting ideas here, the screenwriters struggle mightily to introduce those concepts in an organic way. The film doesn’t quite get down to the “as you know….” level of awful expository dialogue, but it does have to come to a stop to explain matters to the audience. Even during those pauses, the film explains what the villains are in great detail, but never adequately explains what they are doing and why. At the conclusion of the movie, I still didn’t really understand why the titular watchers had been doing any such watching or why the forest turned into the setting of The Blair Witch Project at night. The first half of the film feels like the setup for something that never comes and the whole feels like halves of completely different films that have been stitched together without a second act. Even as potentially cool ideas and villains are introduced, I found myself wondering what the hell any of this had to do with the film’s initial concept.
The generation may have changed, but this is a Shyamalan film through and through. While the filmmaking is solid on a technical level, the script is unable to wrangle its own premise into a consistent narrative. Given its technical competency and creative ambition, I can’t be too mad at it, but it does make for a frustrating and ultimately dissatisfying experience that, regardless of generation, feels like a middle-of-the-road Shyamalan movie.
Image by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Watchers_(film)#/media/File:The_Watchers_film_poster.jpg
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