The Watchers is a 2024 American supernatural horror film directed by Ishana Night Shyamalan, and the cast includes Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, and Olwen Fouéré, and Oliver Finnegan.
M. Night Shyamalan, is also involved in his daughters film as a producer for the movie and whom is set to release Trap this year.
Most films M. Night Shyamalan is involved in generally always have a good and interesting premise but almost always let you down in the end and after watching the trailer, I was intrigued.
So will Ishana follow in the same footsteps as her Dad with The Watchers?
Based on the 2022 novel by A.M. Shine, the film follows Mina (Dakota Fanning), an American in Galway, Ireland, who works at a pet shop who is dealing with a past trauma and is drawn into a strange situation when her boss asks her to deliver a bird to a remote area.
Mina’s journey takes her through a forest where she meets Madeline (Olwen Fouere), an older woman who leads her to a bunker called the Coop where inside, she finds Ciara (Georgina Coleman) and Daniel (Oliver Finnegan).
Madeline has the group line up in front of a large two-way mirror and explains that every night, creatures called Watchers come to observe them.
The Watchers are nocturnal and hide in underground tunnels during the day and the group can only go outside during this time but must stay inside the Coop at night to stay safe.
After a few days, Mina starts to doubt all the rules that Madeline has set and begins to challenge her and find ways to escape.
I will leave it there as don't want to spoil anything if you do plan on watching it.
As I said, the premise is pretty interesting, but it just doesn't play out well at all, and I was overall pretty bored watching this one.
Shyamalan struggles hard to keep the movie interesting unfortunately, as films like this need good tension and suspense but it is severely lacking in those departments.
And the less said about the pacing the better, as it is just all over the place and it ends up making the movie feel incredibly cluttered and over complicated for the sake of it.
As a result, the interesting premise unfortunately never actually develops into anything good and most of the ideas are pretty repetitive and although the performances show flashes of emotion, they don’t bring any of the characters to life.
The dialogue is weak and disappointing as well, and the film has a main character in Mina who is really dull and somewhat annoying, so you end up having a movie that is just boring and a bit of a mess that doesn't really go anywhere interesting.
And considering there is only four main characters, the development is really poor as mentioned, and contributes to how dull the film is overall with none of the characters coming to life in a way you care about.
There's definitely a solid idea at the heart of The Watchers, but Ishana Shyamalan just over complicates it. (Sound familiar)?
Instead of keeping it simple, extra layers that are just not needed are added which turns it into a bit of a mess and it suffers from trying to do too much with a concept that would have been stronger with a simpler approach.
It's all just executed very poorly.
I would rate this film 46% on my horror movie nerd-o-meter.
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