M. Night Shyamalan has crafted a hefty filmography in his time that seems to involve two key tropes - a horror component and a big plot twist at the end of the film. From The Sixth Sense to Old, all his films tend to follow a pattern. Here however the filmmaker is handing those reins down to his daughter Ishana Night Shyamalan in her directorial debut with The Watched. The easy part for Ishana is that this particular story is based off a book, so in theory adapting it should be a relatively easy task. It is a shame then that the film lacks the ambition to expand on its own story.
War of the Worlds actress Dakota Fanning plays Mina, an American immigrant living in Ireland. Mina is tasked with ferrying a parrot from her work in a pet shop in Galway to a zoo in Belfast. Her journey takes her into some mystical woods where she soon becomes lost as her car mysteriously breaks down. Mina then discovers three mysterious strangers, a bunker-like building and sinister creatures who watch these strangers every night. What we have here is a mystery - who are these creatures and why are they so obsessed with watching these people do nothing?
The bunker where all these characters are stuck in every night feels like something out of a science-fiction film. The room itself is there for a reason and there are rules to follow as explained by one of the strangers. Instead of allowing audiences to figure it out themselves the narrative rushes along and soon the film is explaining itself to us. It is a shame that the script takes this approach as it does feel like it is attempting to dumb everything down by giving us a lot of exposition and explanations when it really doesn’t have to. The mystery horror genre is what it is with the emphasis on the “mystery” component, something that this film doesn’t seem to recognise too well.
The Watched does admittedly have a very unique look and palette with the yellow room contrasting the natural green imagery of the nature surrounding it. It does look like a very generic setting and could easily be mistaken as somewhere in America instead of Ireland. The cast of characters are also a mixture of American, British and Irish talent with Olwen Fouéré, Oliver Finnegan and Georgina Campbell joining Fanning as the captors of these mysterious beings. The creatures themselves are terrifying up to a point. We don’t see a lot of them but then again the emphasis is on the human characters as the title suggests. The creatures presence is set up remarkably well until we begin to learn more about them which is when the film deviates in tone and narrative.
The Watched just feels a little too rushed and I did enjoy the character arc of Mina and the whole story surrounding her but the film shifts focus more onto the folklore elements in the latter half of the film. Mina ends up going on a personal journey throughout the film as she learns to live with her past. It is sadly a very generic storytelling devie and the acting can be quite plain sometimes, but I do think the issue here lies in the fact this is Ishana Night Shyamalan’s directorial debut and she has a lot riding on the film to match that of her father’s legacy. You can feel the pressure she was under to live up to her fathers’ work.
★★☆☆☆
2/5
Final Verdict:
The Watched feels like an experiment in and of itself. A folk horror mixed with a mystery thriller where both genres feel a little too blended together, never deciding which to stick with. We have a lot of questions and a lot of exposition and the answers just raise more questions. The film spends too much time explaining itself that you don’t really get to enjoy it. It is a shame as the cast looks the part and the premise is exciting but it is just a shame the execution isn’t really well done in what is a very unique take on a particular concept.
Thanks for reading today’s blog!
Alex Murray, the Head of Eyesight Productions
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