Film Review - The Watched
Dakota Fanning gets lost in the woods Celtic folklore style, courtesy of writer-director Ishana Night Shyamalan
Writer-director Ishana Night Shyamalan, daughter M Night (who acts as producer), proves she’s a chip-off-the-old-block with this rather average horror fairy tale, based on a novel by AM Shine. The Watched (called The Watchers outside the UK and Ireland) has an interesting idea, but it’s the kind of film I rewrite in my head when watching, whilst also pretending I haven’t figured out the twist ending. My chip-off-the-old-block comment is doubly apt, considering this film is certainly no worse (and in some cases considerably better) than almost all M Night Shyamalan’s output post his 1999 masterpiece, The Sixth Sense.
The plot concerns Mina (Dakota Fanning), an American immigrant working in a Galway pet shop. Her refusal to see her twin sister Lucy hints at a tragic backstory. The way she wears wigs and pretends to be someone else when chatting up men in bars indicates self-loathing linked to said past, judging by comments made to the parrot she’s due to transport to a Belfast zoo.
Unfortunately, along the way Mina gets lost in a large forest, Hansel and Gretel style, eventually finding shelter in a mysterious bunker called “the Coop”, where three other people are also stranded, unable to get out. The forest, it seems, does not want them to escape. Nor do the mysterious creatures “the Watchers”, who turn deadly unless there is strict adherence to their rules. These include staying indoors at night and performing in front of a mirrored window.
It’s a suitably intriguing premise that eventually delves into Celtic folklore. But the characters aren’t particularly interesting. Olwen Fouéré is suitably enigmatic as Madeline, an older woman who seems to have sussed out how to stay alive, but it’s hard to feel too bothered about Mina, despite Dakota Fanning’s best efforts. Her other companions Ciara (a wasted Georgina Campbell) and Daniel (Oliver Finnegan), seem present as plot mechanisms rather than people.
Beyond that, the lost in woodland limbo premise feels rather forced, partly because it has been done so many times. Some of the revelations in the story reminded me of TV series Lost, which is never a good thing. There are also nods to everything from The Blair Witch Project (1999) to M Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin (2023). On top of that, the film recalls recent Irish spookiness in films like The Hallow (2015), The Hole in the Ground (2019), and Unwelcome (2023). Because it isn’t significantly better than any of those, the film threatens to vanish from the memory fairly quickly.
Still, Eli Arenson’s cinematography is appropriately atmospheric, the direction is solid, and the sound design is appropriately gnarly (plenty of menacing bone-cracking, claw-scratching, hissing, clicking, and so forth). There aren’t as many annoying jump scares as you might expect, and whilst they are kept offscreen, the unseen creatures generate a modicum of dread. The film gets a lot less scary later on once they’re seen, as is often the case, but with modest expectations, I suspect The Watched will just about scrape a passing grade from supernatural horror audiences.
(Originally published at Medium.)
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