A 28-year-old artist gets stranded in an expansive, untouched forest in western Ireland. Finding shelter, she unknowingly becomes trapped alongside three strangers who are stalked by mysterious creatures every night.
The Watchers is directed by Ishana Night Shyamalan which is her directorial debut.
When I heard Ishana Night Shyamalan was going to direct a horror film I was definitely interested, even though I'm not huge on a lot of her father M.Night Shyamalan's work I was still interested to see what she can do…and well The Watchers definitely exists.
The best way I can describe The Watchers is like an essay that starts out quite well written has all the right punctuation, has the right capitalization and then suddenly during the second half of the essay feels like it was written by a completely different person with bad grammar, terrible punctuation and is very nonsensical.
The Watchers has a solid setup with some interesting folklore attached to it that does get the viewer engaged with the movie, the performances are mostly pretty okay! Olwen Fouéré is definitely the best here she gives a genuinely creepy performance at times and while her character is on the cliched side of things, Fouéré really makes it work especially during the first half of the movie combined with the atmosphere. Her performance blends in with the atmosphere quite well which really helps. Georgina Campbell isn't too bad here either, again not a whole lot to her character but she plays the part well and she is quite likable so I guess that's something.
Dakota Fanning is fine enough, it's nice to see her back in horror but unfortunately as the main lead she's really held back with such a confused script (especially towards the end) we get very little about her character outside of a few flashbacks. The movie tries to connect the plot to her past but it really does not fully explore any of that at all, it's much more slapped on than anything else and doesn't take the time to actually connect the two together in a way that wouldn't feel so clunky.
The first bit of the movie as I said before is pretty decent, the setup is solid and the atmosphere is genuinely creepy at times. Ishana Night Shyamalan definitely has an eye for a great setting, the because the forest is quite effective in bringing out thrills and some creepy moments. It almost feels like one of those indie horror games and I mean that in a positive way, where it feels like there is so much more to explore than meets the eye. Plus the rules of The Watchers themselves are pretty creepy as well, the sound of banging on the glass is effective and really does get you on the edge of your seat.
Unfortunately the second half of the movie is a complete and total mess, the movie suddenly feels the need to over explain itself plus the movie gets incredibly stupid and not in the good way. A lot of the creepy imagery that was present during the first half is traded in for incredibly goofy lines, nonsensical new rules about the lore of the watchers and just a completely forgettable second half that really does not compliment anything that came before it.
Overall The Watchers is definitely one of the more disappointing films of 2024 so far, there was a lot of potential here for a thrilling ride but a lot of pieces were missing to make this work.
The Watchers is available on all VOD Platforms!
4/10 D+
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