Written for the Screen & Directed By Ishana Night Shyamalan; Starring Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouéré, Oliver Finnegan, Alistair Brammer, and John Lynch.
Based on A. M. Shine’s 2022 novel of the same name, The Watchers follows Nina (Dakota Fanning), a young artist who emigrated from America to Ireland. When her car breaks down one day, she gets stranded in an extensive, immaculate forest. After finding shelter, she becomes trapped alongside three strangers (Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouéré, and Oliver Finnegan), where they're stalked by mysterious creatures every night. This marks the feature directorial debut of Ishana Night Shyamlan. She’s previously written and directed episodes of the Apple TV+ series Servant and served as second unit director on 2021’s Old and last year’s Knock at the Cabin.
She may be the daughter of successful suspense thriller auteur M. Night Shyamalan, but Ishana still shows a lot of potential as a talented filmmaker in her own right here. As director, she creates such a suspenseful atmosphere. The pacing she crafts with editor Job ter Burg moves along very well. Abel Korzeniowski’s chilling musical score really shines when hearing it in a theater as does the overall soundscape. As writer, she does provide expositional lines of dialogue. However, they are used in ways that actually feel natural. Like when Nina asks questions to other characters, the audience gets answers the same way they normally would in real life by just hearing them. Thankfully, there’s also a few effective flashbacks at different points of the film.
Having grown up in the 2000s, I remember how prolific Dakota Fanning was as a child actress. Luckily, she’s still acting as an adult. She gives a performance that is both restrained and strong at the same time. The amount of supporting players in this movie may be small, but they each get their own opportunities to shine. Among them are Olwen Fouéré as a mysterious old lady named Madeline as well as Georginia Campbell and Oliver Finnegan who play the other two occupants Nina befriends.
With all of that being said, the plot loses steam in the third act. What happens there feels detached from where things were heading early on. By the end, it leaves way more questions than has answers. However, the first two acts do enough to outweigh the third. Ishana Night Shyamalan seems to have inherited her dad’s talents and put them to good use here. Hopefully, she’ll take what she learned from making The Watchers, and see how she can get better moving forward in her career.
Rating: 3.5/5
Based on A. M. Shine’s 2022 novel of the same name, The Watchers follows Nina (Dakota Fanning), a young artist who emigrated from America to Ireland. When her car breaks down one day, she gets stranded in an extensive, immaculate forest. After finding shelter, she becomes trapped alongside three strangers (Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouéré, and Oliver Finnegan), where they're stalked by mysterious creatures every night. This marks the feature directorial debut of Ishana Night Shyamlan. She’s previously written and directed episodes of the Apple TV+ series Servant and served as second unit director on 2021’s Old and last year’s Knock at the Cabin.
She may be the daughter of successful suspense thriller auteur M. Night Shyamalan, but Ishana still shows a lot of potential as a talented filmmaker in her own right here. As director, she creates such a suspenseful atmosphere. The pacing she crafts with editor Job ter Burg moves along very well. Abel Korzeniowski’s chilling musical score really shines when hearing it in a theater as does the overall soundscape. As writer, she does provide expositional lines of dialogue. However, they are used in ways that actually feel natural. Like when Nina asks questions to other characters, the audience gets answers the same way they normally would in real life by just hearing them. Thankfully, there’s also a few effective flashbacks at different points of the film.
Having grown up in the 2000s, I remember how prolific Dakota Fanning was as a child actress. Luckily, she’s still acting as an adult. She gives a performance that is both restrained and strong at the same time. The amount of supporting players in this movie may be small, but they each get their own opportunities to shine. Among them are Olwen Fouéré as a mysterious old lady named Madeline as well as Georginia Campbell and Oliver Finnegan who play the other two occupants Nina befriends.
With all of that being said, the plot loses steam in the third act. What happens there feels detached from where things were heading early on. By the end, it leaves way more questions than has answers. However, the first two acts do enough to outweigh the third. Ishana Night Shyamalan seems to have inherited her dad’s talents and put them to good use here. Hopefully, she’ll take what she learned from making The Watchers, and see how she can get better moving forward in her career.
Rating: 3.5/5