The Watchers (2024)

Score: 3.5 / 5

After assisting her father with his two most recent films and coming into her own on their (excellent) jointly-created series Servant, Ishana Night Shyamalan comes into her own with her feature-length film directorial debut. It's not entirely her own, produced as it is by her father and adapted from an effectively spooky novel by A.M Shine (which I also softly recommend). The material seems like something her father would have dreamt up, and between its folkloric conceits and its numerous twists before a major twist ending, it's the kind of story that has become synonymous with the Shyamalan name. For some, that will be a turn off. For me, it means a deliciously stylized foray into psychological fantasy horror with an emphasis on solidly PG-13 scares. And this fits the bill.

I won't recount the plot here. Partly because the marketing shared more than was necessary already, partly because the plot's unraveling is part of the fun. Please note, then, that I won't be tiptoeing around any spoilers moving forward.

Shyamalan's screenplay capably adapts the source material here, which will land well for some audiences but not all. Anyone who gets easily irritated or frustrated by plot holes and unrealistic logistics should steer clear of this material, both in literary and cinematic forms. It doesn't make sense that the forest or its titular inhabitants haven't been found, being on apparently an easily accessible route between Galway and Belfast; it doesn't make sense that nobody has followed up there, considering the plentiful missing persons posts en route (not to mention the numerous workers who were sent there to build a bunker and never returned). It doesn't make sense that, despite having been in the bunker for many months, its inhabitants aren't starving or ill or even emaciated or mentally unstable. It doesn't make sense that the "points of no return" encircling their bunker are so elaborately and deviously decorated (a la Blair Witch). It doesn't make sense that the professor's office is perfectly dusted yet completely untouched after his absence of what seems to be several terms.

Audiences eager to critique (here meaning criticize and condemn) movies for this won't be able to see the forest for the trees. But anyone who prefers cerebral meditations to generic conventions -- anyone eager to critique (here meaning analyze lines of artistic curiosity) movies for more than plot -- should enjoy this trip into the darkest woods. Shyamalan films, once you allow yourself to slip into their frequencies, have a hypnotic power that emphasizes their own internal logic. Even when that logic isn't necessarily obvious. For example, here we almost never see the characters eat, and when we do, it's the crows or whatever they are able to catch; so what does the golden conyer parakeet thing with them eat? Is it a cannibal? But in context, this isn't a survival horror story; it's a fantasy horror story, and the bird is less a cause for concern than a small, almost angelic force of nature.

After all, the film is drowning in its own color palette. Shyamalan and her cinematographer use heavy color grading to make everything very blue in hue, and it carries into production design as well, as when we see protagonist Mina, wearing blue, driving her blue Jeep into the blue-green wilderness, stopped in a shadowed blue copse as bluish wisps of fog curl up around her. Key points of contrast include the salvific sunlight, always a bright yellow, the amber lights of the bunker's secret basement that will point their way forward and out, and of course the yellow shock of the caged bird that eventually guides them out of the forest. Color theory, some might call it, is in full force here, as if a grad student was behind the visual dynamics of this film.

More importantly, the titular creatures themselves are wonderfully realized and terrifyingly rendered. Really, and with only few exceptions, this film is a pleasure to behold. It's been a long time since I've been impressed by fantasy horror (and precious few new titles even approach that subgenre), though here, as with its source material, I find something like The Hallow or even Lady in the Water important points of reference to understand what The Watchers is up to. While, having recently read the novel, I was annoyed at the different architecture of the bunker, the hurried chronology of events, and the overly sentimental finale, I found myself tensing at all the proper (mostly predictable) moments and riding the roller coaster for all its fun, silly contrivances, which is exactly what we're meant to do.

What else is there to say? Lots. Forgive the rambling, but here we go.

Shyamalan's strengths, beyond atmosphere and tone, are rooted in fantasy and plain-faced horror more than in suspense, tension, or drama. Her screenplay hamstrings earned character development, cheating her actors out of grounded stakes or opportunities for variation. And the performances are all pretty flat here, though Olwen Fouere manages to be effectively creepy. Georgina Campbell is a mess because her character should be a mess but isn't at all, instead being weirdly mothering and also determined to dance in a nonsensical manner for her unseen audience. Dakota Fanning is actually annoying and seems to think that leaving her mouth open is an acting choice. Granted, they're not done any favors by the dialogue, which dumps exposition in every scene like that's its job.

I rarely say this, but this film should have been at least half an hour longer, if only to spread out the exposition (because, truly, the material by definition requires a LOT of world-building). That would allow for interpersonal drama between the characters as well as belief in their starvation and loneliness. Shyamalan does, however, turn her focus toward the more artistic pursuits of intangibles: this movie isn't about the scares, the survival, or even the material reality of what she's built. It's about watching. Voyeurism and mirroring and duplication are the themes at work here, in almost every scene, from Mina and her twin sister Lucy (though those literary names are more distracting than illuminating) to the near-constant shots in reflective surfaces, from the mimicking bird that isn't supposed to be talking to the watchers themselves -- revealed to be shape-shifting fae -- everything is carefully calculated to impress on us the odd balance between individuality and conformity in a world meant for survival through adaptation. It's a whole thesis, and Shyamalan seems content to give us bullet points in rapid fire succession. Which is to say, it will make for a comfy, cozy spooky watch on streaming, and perhaps that's where it's best kept.