The Watchers Review: Only Nepotism Could Have Gotten This Film Made

With the release of Ishana Night Shyamalan's directorial debut "The Watchers," audiences leaned curiously forward to see if she possessed the same talents that made her father, M. Night, such an interesting filmmaker. As it turns out, the two share many of the same strengths and weaknesses — both have a skill for cultivating a thick and tangible atmosphere but fumble the bag when it comes to delivering on the potential of their plots.

"The Watchers" has a muddled narrative from the kernel of an intriguing concept, and despite an endless supply of appealing visuals (thanks entirely to the island of Ireland for providing the scenery), it squanders every opportunity to reward its audience. Its script should have gone through half a dozen more drafts before being greenlit and probably would have been best served as a learning experience that needn't have gotten to the point of actually being made and released in theaters. In short, "The Watchers" is the purest definition of nepotism, a film that has no plausible explanation for being made without the backing of a successful parent serving as producer.

Mina (Dakota Fanning) is a lost soul, tormented by the memory of her mother's violent death 15 years earlier. She goes through the motions at her day job working at a pet store, but she spends her nights using wigs and fake names to pretend to be someone else — anyone rather than herself. When her boss asks her to transport a rare parrot from their store in Galway to a zoo in Belfast, she's happy for the distraction. But while driving through the Irish countryside, she finds herself lost in a dense forest where, no matter how hard she tries, she can't find her way back to the main road. As night falls, she meets a mysterious old woman, Madeline (Olwen Fouéré), who beckons her to safety inside a small shelter. 

The woods may seem remote, but she and Madeline are not alone — aside from Ciara ("Barbarian" star Georgina Campbell) and Daniel (Oliver Finnegan), two more people who seemingly share the one-room building they refer to as the Coop, they are also surrounded by the Watchers. Mysterious creatures who are constantly observing their four captives through a mirror that makes up one entire wall of their shelter, the Watchers demand that they return to the Coop each night and not try to escape the bounds of the forest. Whether Mina will follow their orders, however, is another question entirely.

It's easy enough to see what Ishana Night Shyamalan was going for here. The mirror imagery is persistent throughout the film, with the literal mirror that dominates the scenes inside the Coop, the presence of shapeshifting doppelgangers, and the fact that Mina is an identical twin. The idea of identity, and being forced to examine one's inner self, is present throughout the film. But "The Watchers" suffers simultaneously from having too many ideas and at the same time none at all. Sometimes it's an examination of grief and guilt, then it shifts gears to be an on-the-nose depiction of figures in Celtic folklore, steamrolling over any subtleties or metaphors it may have introduced.

What's frustrating is that there are plenty of ways "The Watchers" could have worked, but it never fully commits to any one of them. You want to make a movie about fae holding a group of humans hostage? Great, we will gladly watch it. But you have to actually make it about that, and not muddy the waters with goofy subplots introducing new characters who set everything in motion three-quarters of the way through the film. In terms of explaining its narrative, "The Watchers" is all or nothing: It either gives us no information about what's actually happening on screen, or offers up painfully clumsy monologues of exposition. Among this, the complete lack of character development that hobbles all of the actors involved, and the pacing issues that abound, it's clear that the script of "The Watchers" is the guilty party responsible for much of the film's failure. (Although Shamalayan may not deserve all the blame, since this story was based on a horror novel by A.M. Shine.)

Shyamalan shows some promise behind the camera — at the beginning of the film, she does a good enough job of building up atmosphere with her shots of the forest that overwhelm the frame. But her work as a writer leaves quite a bit to be desired, and it's honestly a bit shocking that a script this ham-fisted and full of flaws would be released in this state. There are moments, especially during the third act, where the plot turns with melodramatic reveals that will likely only elicit titters from the audience. Shyamalan may have inherited her father's love of the twist ending, but the one she creates in "The Watchers" is as unearned and unsatisfying as they come.

"The Watchers" premieres in theaters on June 7.