“The Watchers” (2024) is an adaptation of A.M. Shine’s novel with the same name and Ishana Shymalan’s feature debut with her dad, M. Night Shymalan, as a producer. Mina (Dakota Fanning) works in a pet shop. While transporting a yellow bird, whom she names Darwin, to the zoo, her car breaks down in the middle of a dense forest on the lush, verdant Irish countryside. As she looks for help, she loses sight of her car. While rushing somewhere, Madeline (Olwen Fouere) crosses Nina’s path and orders her to get inside a one room structure with a multiple bolted door. Inside, Mina meets Ciara (Georgina Campbell) and Daniel (Oliver Finnegan). Madeline orders them to stand before a one-way mirror as they hear unusual sounds from the titular, mysterious figures. Despite Madeline’s reassurances that if they obey the rules, they will live, Mina rebels and is determined to find a way out. Will she and who are the Watchers?
Fanning is back as the forlorn, mournful Mina who enjoys going out in disguise to pretend to be other people and is having problems connecting with her sister Lucy (Bram Stoker’s Dracula references) or anyone else because of a deep sense of loathing. Shymalan spends a majority of the first act obscuring people’s faces or blocking them to reflect it. The bird symbolizes her childhood when she was free of the burden of guilt in a scenario that feels ripped off from “Titane” (2021). There is a lot of bird imagery: fleeing ravens, The Coop as the name of their dwelling. Mina’s crisis is being able to look at herself in the mirror without hating herself, which means the Coop is more of a psychological burden for her than most although it also puts her at an advantage later when she faces the creatures. Unfortunately “The Watchers” never develops Nina as a three dimensional character so she comes across as a bit flat: an artist who prefers charcoal, rebellious and resourceful.
Every character is more of a sketch than a real person, so it is confoundingly difficult to get invested whether any of them live or die. Campbell, whose characters cannot seem to catch a break after “Barbarian” (2022), acts spacey, dances and embraces denial after her husband, John (Allstair Brammer), failed to return after looking for help. Finnegan is tasked with just acting like a bit of a wild card. It is the kind of role that Barry Keoghan would have killed pre “Saltburn” (2023) but just feels rote here. Then there is Fouere, who was the best part of “The Strangers: Chapter 1” (2024), but here is given a heavy lift, which she fails to carry despite her best efforts: incessant prose dumping about the mythology at the root of “The Watchers.” At one point, she urges everyone to hurry up then stops to deliver a historical soliloquy on their circumstances. Stop gabbing and hustle!
Without spoiling anything, at the Boston screening, moviegoers’ cultural origins gave them a leg up on figuring out the identity of the Watchers, and one of the promotional posters gives it away entirely. Otherwise it probably will not be easy for most audience members to guess. The opening clues makes it seem like aliens because technology fails. It is great when a movie does not dip into the tired bag of the mystical, but when introducing a concept that is not widely known, it helps if more details are released steadily throughout the entire story instead of dumped into the last half, which is like “Lost” in a bad way. There is a big reveal that basically adheres to the James T. Kirk principle: it does not matter how strange a creature is, there is some dude who wants to have sex with it. “The Watchers” has no sexual situations, but it is deeply implied and pivotal to the whole proceedings. Strictly speaking, it is not only a horror movie, but it is hard not to judge a film that literally gets scared and horny at the same time. It is supposed to be inspirational as if different species can coexist, but that only works if the baddies did not feel superior and utterly despise human beings. The concept is not developed enough to feel hopeful, just off putting.
Is there deeper meaning to “The Watchers?” Unfortunately yes, and none of it resonates. The main theme is that accepting death is a part of the natural order. Guilt deceives people into believing that they are monstrous. The scenario also felt like a not to subtle dig at consumers of media. Cue Maddy from “Euphoria” asking, “Wait. Is this fucking play about us?” The characters are stuck in a space as if they are actors in a black box theater. There is an old-fashioned tube television hooked up to a DVD player with only one DVD of a fictional reality television series in its third season, Lair of Love, which feels like “Love Island.” The television show is a mockery of the predicament that Mina finds herself in: stuck in a house with strangers, wanting to leave, but not necessarily get voted off, i.e. die. They are like actors forced to perform, and if they fail, their captors will execute them. They are not permitted freedom of movement. Like the famous, the creatures want to be them, but are also eager to rip them to shreds if they do not satisfy them with a performance, which is why Mina is so troublesome. She keeps turning the tables and finding ways to look at them. After finding a camcorder, the four rig up a security cam to safely peek at their captors. Prepare for some visual references to the classic horror film “The Blair Witch Project” (1999). The consumers reject similar scrutiny. It is premature for Shymalan to bemoan the drawbacks of fame, but she does have the experience.
The entire story feels like M. Night’s lesser works, but Shymalan has a good eye. The landscape shots are gorgeous, and she nails visually depicting Mina’s isolation, but it can be described in the same way that Aretha Franklin complimented Taylor Swift when asked about her voice, “Beautiful gowns.” It does not matter how gorgeous a film is if you are laughing at a film, not with it. The most absurd aspect of “The Watchers” is the treatment of real estate. If a person goes missing for decades, the world will move on, toss your stuff or put it in storage, especially if you are renting the space or working somewhere. Nowadays you can still work somewhere and not have a place to work. Little details take people out of the fictional, fantasy headspace. The Shymalan clan is a bit out of step and lagging behind the rest of the world. Come into the twenty-first century.
Don’t be like the title. Look away. It is 1 hour 42 minutes of your life that you will never get back. High production values are not enough of a reason to see this movie.
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The Watchers are changelings, fae, the aos si or sidhe. Basically the fairies had wings, and human beings worshipped them like gods until they did not, inexplicably got the upper hand and trapped them underground where they lost their wings and became sensitive to light. Before this war happened, some knocked boots and had halflings. Big shocker if you can determine which of the four it is! Eventually they returned to the surface but could not escape the forest until they mastered mimicking human beings; thus the Coop, which Professor Kilmartin (John Lynch) built and stayed in starting September 4, 2009 to study them until he captured one and got freaky with it until 300 days later when he repented of his sins—luring locals to the site to build it and become fairy fodder—by attempting a murder suicide. That whole setup is more disturbing than the main plot line.
“The Watchers” does not work because the fae feel more like generic scary monsters despite all the prose dumping and back story. Their modus operandi is not going to stick with anyone after they leave the theater. Other than looking like people and killing them, what do fairies do? A creature that can mimic human appearance and voices should be terrifying, especially since all cultures have a cryptid with the same abilities. This one is a Celtic take, but the depiction feels anticlimactic. If they left the woods, they probably would not like it that much considering how much they despise people. They need more of a motivation.
Doppelganger horror has a proud history, and it even fails on that front. There is never this moment where anyone is so invested in a character not getting swapped and being worried that no one would notice because you need to care about the original, and there is no one like that in “The Watchers.” There is only one scene where an aos si cuts a rune into an imminent victim’s forehead. It is pretty cool, and that is it. How did these guys rule their region? They deserve better movie magic.