The Watchers (2024) Spoiler Free Movie Review

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The Watchers is horror movie that is not worth watching

The Watchers (Or The Watched as it is also called in some countries) is the directorial film debut of Ishana Shyamalan, who also wrote the script and is the daughter of M. Night Shyamalan, who is listed as a producer for the movie and is set to release Trap this year.

M. Night Shyamalan films 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 and it was on my one to watch movies releasing in June. 

So will Ishana follow in the same footsteps as her Dad with The Watchers?

Premise

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.

Is It Worth Watching?

Honestly, I was pretty bored watching this one. As said, the premise is pretty interesting, but it just doesn't play out well at all.

Shyamalan struggles hard to keep the movie interesting unfortunately. 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, and throw in lots of weak dialogue and a main character in Mina who is really dull and somewhat annoying, you have a movie that is just boring and a bit of a mess that doesn't really go anywhere interesting. 

Saying that, the character development is poor in all the characters and considering there is only four of them, that is unacceptable in my book. It's all just a bit dull and mundane.

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. 4.5/10. [The Watchers on IMDB]

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