Film Review - The Watchers (2024)

The Watchers is the new film by Ishana Night Shyamalan (daughter of M Night Shyamalan who also produces this movie and has his own film Trap coming later this year) and concerns a young woman named Mina (Dakota Fanning) transporting a rare bird to an Irish Zoo but gets trapped in a mysterious forest and is later taken to the coup where Madeline (Olwen Fouere), Clara (Georgina Campbell) and Daniel (Oliver Finnegan) reside and every night the Watchers come to watch them but there is more, much more to them than meets the eye.

The Watchers has some good ideas and visuals but it ultimately did very little for me as a film and I was keen to see what Shyamalan Jr was going to give us as I am a fan of her father, but it seems she’s learned some lessons from her old man except one key one which I’ll get to.

But first this movie looks pretty good with it’s bold oranges, dark tunnels, mysterious forests and effective atmosphere and it works fairly well in a dark cinema and the film has some good performances from its core cast members though I’m not as big a fan of Dakota as I am of her sister Elle but she’s fine here.

Plus this movie has some good ideas relating to other myths and legends but sadly I felt this movie felt a bit messy tone wise in regards to making these ideas feel fully formed in a way that didn’t feel like a tonal whiplash, at one point your in a horror setting and then it switches gears to something else entirely and those twists and turns didn’t feel as seamless for me.

And also what this movie lacks is memorable characters something that M Night’s films have had for the most part be it the Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Split and even most recently Old and Knock at the Cabin whereas here Ishana I felt didn’t learn that lesson as well but hey this is her first time up at bat whereas dear old dad’s been a seasoned pro for many years so some mistakes will be made, hopefully she gets better with future films.

And so that was the Watchers and it didn’t do an awful lot for me I’m sorry to say, hopefully Trap is better later this year, 1 and a half out of 5.