THE WATCHERS (2024)

Studio:   New Line Cinema
Director: Ishana Night Shyamalan
Writer:   Ishana Night Shyamalan
Producer: M. Night Shyamalan, Ashwin Rajan, Nimitt Mankad
Stars:    Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouere, Oliver Finnegan, Alistair Brammer, John Lynch

Review Score:

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Summary:

Trapped inside a woodland shelter where deadly creatures observe them every evening, four people band together to solve the mystery of how to escape a strange forest.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Pet store employee Mina indulges her habit of pretending to be other people by spending an evening wearing a wig while hitting up a bar where she introduces herself as "Caroline." While driving to a zoo near Belfast to deliver a rare bird named Darwin for her boss, Mina imitates the voice of her estranged sister Lucy, who left a concerned message for Mina regarding the 15-year anniversary of their mother's death. A flashback later reveals Mina's childhood penchant for petulant mimicry caused a car accident that disfigured Lucy and killed their mother.

After her car strangely loses power, Mina looks for help in a forest adorned with rusty signs marked by numbers and the words "point of no return." Unable to find her way back to the vehicle, Mina realizes she is inexplicably lost in the woods.

Feeling endangered by an unseen presence as darkness falls, Mina hurriedly follows an older woman who offers safety in a shelter. Once inside, the woman introduces herself as Madeline and says the cabin is called "The Coop." Mina also meets the shelter's other two inhabitants, Ciara and Daniel, who have been stuck in the forest for months. As Mina is instructed to face a wall that is a two-way mirror, Madeline cryptically warns that dangerous creatures dubbed "The Watchers" arrive outside every night to observe the occupants from sunset to sunrise.

Mina sees a haunting vision of a little girl while trying to leave the forest the next day. After warning that the woods can drive people mad with hallucinations, Madeline explains there is no safe way out of the forest, but since the watchers only come out in the dark, Mina can always make her way back to the shelter before nightfall as long as she never ventures beyond the signs marking the point of no return boundary.

During another daylight excursion, Mina learns Ciara's husband John left to go for help six days earlier. Mina also finds a hole leading to subterranean tunnels where the watchers presumably hide during the day.

Madeline, Ciara, and Daniel tell Mina there are four rules for survival: Do not turn your back to the mirror; do not open the shelter's door after dark; do not go near the burrows; and always stay in the light. Madeline adds that the watchers will allow them to live as long as they follow the rules.

Ignoring the rules, Mina convinces Daniel to help her investigate a burrow. Lowered by rope, Mina finds a trove of discarded items including a bicycle and a camcorder that Daniel hoists back up. Mina rushes back to the surface when a six-fingered hand reaches toward her from the shadows and growls the name "Ainriochtan."

That night, Daniel puts the camcorder outside the door and connects it to the shelter's television in hopes of catching the watchers on camera. Unexpectedly, Ciara's husband John seemingly comes to the door instead of the creatures. Madeline warns that John is actually a disguised watcher sent to punish them for Mina entering the burrows. While Ciara wrestles with whether or not to open the door, creatures pull John away and smash the camera. The watchers also begin angrily smashing the mirror glass, but eventually stop. The following morning, Madeline throws the bicycle and other recovered items back into a hole to avoid further wrath from the watchers.

As the onset of winter continues wearing on everyone, Mina and Ciara find Daniel tying up Madeline in the woods following an argument. Ciara chases after Daniel while Mina frees Madeline. With night falling, Mina and Madeline hurry back to the shelter to find Daniel refusing to open the door for them. Mina and Madeline are forced to hide among the trees as watchers begin surrounding the structure.

The watchers scatter for a search when they see the two women are missing. Mina and Madeline use the opportunity to rush back to the shelter. Pleading for entry, Mina appeals to Daniel's similar sense of belonging to a broken family by revealing her guilt over her mother's death and subsequent estrangement from her sister. Daniel lets the women back inside.

Madeline finally tells everyone she was supposedly a folklore teacher who deliberately came to the forest to hunt the watchers. She further explains that the watchers are an ancient species of mythical changelings rumored to have formerly been winged faeries, and they want to observe humans so they can mutate into indistinguishable doppelgangers.

Fearing the angered watchers are about to violently break down the shelter, Mina, Madeline, Ciara, and Daniel find a hatch in the floor leading to an underground bunker with a computer. Video files on the computer reveal the shelter and bunker were built by Professor Rory Kilmartin to study the watchers. Kilmartin confesses that building his structures required continually hiring laborers whom he allowed to be killed every day at sundown during construction. Kilmartin also expresses concern that the watchers were close to mastering their mimicry of him. He then began ruminating on their duplication powers as a means to cheat death after befriending a young female watcher who was different from the others. By day 300, Kilmartin became fearful of the unusual being he befriended. Kilmartin's final video ends with a plea for someone to follow birds to a boat that will allow them to escape the forest, and then to destroy the research inside his university office to prevent knowledge of the watchers from spreading.

When Mina, Madeline, Ciara, and Daniel emerge from the hatch in the morning, they find the shelter destroyed. Mina releases the bird she brought with her and they follow it through the woods.

The group comes across a large carved stone in the ground that Madeline identifies as where the faeries were originally imprisoned. According to legend, faeries served as a bridge between nature and man by living among humans as gods. Over time, however, their changeling abilities became terrifying. Humans ultimately banished the faeries to an underground tomb and sealed them inside. They eventually lost their wings and their magic and became corrupted creatures trapped in the woods.

Everyone picks up the pace as darkness falls and watchers resume pursuing them. Mina, Madeline, and Ciara finally make it to Kilmartin's boat and escape the forest, but a watcher taking the form of Ciara's husband John kills Daniel.

Back in Galway, Mina takes on the task of destroying Kilmartin's office like he instructed. Mina ends up recovering materials that discuss a new race of uniquely powerful halflings who were born of both humans and faeries. Although Kilmartin was unsure of what happened to the halflings after the faeries were banished, he believed they were capable of replicating the dead.

Mina visits Ciara to show her photos proving Kilmartin was married to Madeline. However, Mina also produces an obituary showing Madeline died in 2001. Mina concludes Kilmartin was trying to recreate his wife by studying the watchers, meaning the Madeline they brought back to Ireland with them is a creature capable of walking in sunlight.

Madeline arrives at Ciara's house. Now revealed as a changeling, Madeline morphs through the forms of Ciara, John, Daniel, and others as she knocks Ciara unconscious and attacks Mina. Madeline admits she is Ainriochtan, also known as "The Day Walker," and confesses she was studying Mina, Ciara, and Daniel up close with the ultimate intention of using them to escape her forest captivity.

Mina stops Madeline's attack by telling her she is actually a halfling, which is why Madeline can walk in sunshine and leave the woods even though the other watchers cannot. Using her own tragic past and identity crisis, Mina compares the two of them as similarly lonely monsters, but convinces Madeline she should seek out others like her for companionship. Madeline says she hopes Mina is right about other halflings existing. She then sprouts large wings and flies away. Mina helps Ciara recover.

Sometime later, Mina reconciles with her sister Lucy by visiting Lucy's family and revealing everything that happened with Madeline and the forest. From outside a window, a young, red-haired halfling stares in observation.

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Review:

From a David versus Goliath perspective, I can see why some people decry nepotism in Hollywood. From a practicality perspective, I just don't have the same fierce opposition against it like those people do.

For one thing, who among us hasn't used a personal connection to get a job interview, a restaurant reservation, a discount at a store where a friend works, or some similar favor not everyone has access to? As long as we're not talking about a cushy no-show gig to funnel unearned cash at a layabout lounging poolside with a silver spoon in hand, why shouldn't a celebrity's son or daughter utilize the avenues a prominent parent affords them? When opportunity knocks, answer the door, even if someone famous helps turn the knob.

Plus, it seems to me if a filmmaker, author, actor, artist, or musician is widely revered for their craft, it stands to reason their creative DNA would be passed down to their children. That might be the best succession plan to continue getting more of something we enjoy. We're supposed to not be curious about the songs a rock star's kid might produce, or a second-generation chef's culinary creations, because they supposedly had an unfair advantage in getting their work out there? If they prove they have the talent, then they deserve the attention. If they don't, they're liable to wash out anyway.

Besides, it's often quite interesting to see where an apple lands when it falls from the family tree. Will the offspring venture in an unexpected direction like Bela Lugosi Jr. becoming a lawyer, or maybe follow in a father's fright fiction footsteps like Stephen King's son Joe Hill?

For me, that's why it's similarly interesting to dig into the first feature of M. Night Shyamalan's director daughter Ishana Night Shyamalan. Her previous work on the eerie series "Servant" provided a peek into what looked like a proclivity for supernatural storytelling a la her father. But where else might individuality steer her?

With "The Watchers," Ishana Shyamalan appears pretty comfortable, for now at least, creeping around in the same type of thriller territory where the elder Shyamalan made their family name. That's what makes her lineage such a dangerous double-edged sword in this situation. Having "Shyamalan" at the end of your credit might look like a gold key at first, but it also brings the burden of additional expectations one wouldn't have to deal with otherwise.

"The Watchers" doesn't get off to a particularly promising start. If I never see another cold opening where a panting person runs wide-eyed through the woods to escape an unseen threat, that would be perfectly fine with me. Alas, this requisite setup-for-a-stinger prologue to "The Watchers" resets the clock on exactly when that time might finally come.

The story formally begins with prototypical protagonist Mina. Haunted by a traumatic past she feels guilty about, Mina suffers from an identity crisis that permits her to avoid facing who she feels she really is. Sent on an assignment to deliver a rare bird to a presumably remote zoo, Mina finds others who share her fascination for false faces, except these others are mysterious monsters who only come out at night.

A car breakdown strands Mina in a forest filled with these creatures. Salvation comes quickly when an older woman named Madeline ushers her into a shelter with two other strangers. Mina learns these people have been trapped there for months. Escape appears impossible because there isn't enough light in one day to make the trip back through the trees on foot. And if they're not back in front of the shelter's two-way mirror so "the watchers" can continue observing them every evening from sunset to sunrise, an even worse fate might befall everyone.

Ishana Shyamalan based her screenplay on a novel by A.M. Shine. I haven't read Shine's book, so I can't say if the source or the script is to blame here. Wherever the fault originates, "The Watchers" has its fair share of plotting problems.

Speaking for myself, but I bet for 99.9% of all other people as well, if I were stuck inside a woodland cabin with only one room for at least eight hours each day, I'd make the most of that time by tearing the place apart in search of another exit, a useful item, or any clue that might bring about an end to my predicament. I would not spend it repeatedly watching Season Three of the fictional reality show "Lair of Love," which is the only DVD available in the shelter, and what Mina chooses to do instead. Mina's three "roommates" apparently aren't motivated to do much either, making it more hysterical that they don't discover something significant, literally right beneath their feet, until two-thirds of the way through the runtime.

More than once you're liable to wonder, "Wait, how are they only getting around to this now?" There are only four hard rules for survival, but Madeline doesn't whisper a word of what they are until Mina's third day. "Lair of Love" must really be that racy, because Mina remains in no rush for additional information, never once asking anyone to elaborate on how they came to the forest, how they found out what to do in front of the mirror, or what else they know about the watchers. Unless you accept each character as an "oh well, I guess this is how it goes" shoulder-shrugger, the only explanation for the piecemeal placement of key exposition everyone should have already shared is the story didn't have a smarter way to space out its scenes for plotting a proper timeline.

Over on the shoulder where an angel would be, anyone willing to lay down a back-breaking bag of disbelief may find both the mood and the mystery captivating enough to hold an audience's attention for 100 minutes. What "The Watchers" locks in logic, which is plenty, Ishana Shyamalan makes up for with style capable of cooling off copious questions until a time when they're no longer necessary to ask. The spell of suggestive spooks and smoldering suspense won't entrance everyone, although those who do succumb shouldn't mind the pacing hiccups as much.

In true Shyamalan fashion, "The Watchers" includes a twist, or maybe more of an unanticipated reveal. Surprisingly, it was not what I felt led to guess given what we learn of a certain someone's background along with the mythological makeup of the creatures. What it is isn't a jaw-dropper. But it's a swerve that earns the last act some credit it spends to get amusingly silly as the movie expands from horror to fantasy with a conclusion that leaks out of the forest and into the larger world.

Once "The Watchers" is all said and done, its ledger shows a little more black than red after subtracting the debt of head-scratching character behavior and questionable writing, then adding the profit of fine performances and a solidly cinematic presentation. As first features go, Ishana Night Shyamalan should be satisfied with getting on base in her initial trip to the plate. Individual viewers can decide if she gets there with a walk or a hit. Either way, this debut shows promise for a new player worth watching.

Review Score: 60

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