The Watchers (2024) So here we have a fantasy-supernatural-semi horror thriller concocted by Nepo Baby Ishana Shyamalan, daughter of the erratic purveyor of such movies, M. Night Shyamalan.....
Is she a chip off the old block? Had she got cinematic chops to glue us to our seats with dazzling twists and otherworldly, 'Twliight Zone' type plots?
Or did she choose, for her debut film, to slavishly imitate the worst elements of her father's films.....a devotion to laborious mythologies that cross the line into silliness and a reliance on Hail Mary twists to defibrillate the comatose storyline?
Sorry to report.......the latter.
Not that Shyamalan the younger doesn't possess cinematic craftsmanship. The scenes are skillfully photographed, staged and edited for whatever effect she was hoping to achieve. We don't doubt that if she ever comes up with a script to match her skills, she could knock our socks off.
But not this time. She chose to serve up a pale generic version of some of her dad's most ridiculed films...(particularly 'Lady In The Water')
Off we go now to a creepy Irish forest, inhabited by combination Monster-Fairy hybrids who can shape-shift to imitate humans. (Yes, there's an elaborate backstory to this bunch, that we wouldn't even begin to explain lest we put ourselves to sleep....)
Unlucky folks who stumble into Monster-Fairyland either get offed or forced to stay in a one room house, one of whose walls is a 2 way mirror. At night, these poor suckers must present themselves in front of the mirror side and let the beasties watch them from the clear glass side.....hence, 'The Watchers'.
Trapped with the human detainees is Mina (Dakota Fanning), an American girl who'd exiled herself to Ireland, the better to suffer her inner torment from a traumatic childhood event. (Which explains, we suppose, why Fanning wanders through the movie in a low gear depressed daze....)
By the time the film lurches to its conclusion, unloading a few paltry twists, we're only left pondering why we bothered to sit through it at all. By that time, director Shyamalan is so tangled up in myth exposition, she's too distracted to give the film any genuine emotional high points.
For horror-fantasy completists, wait until it hits either a free streaming service or one you already subscribe to for other content.
For everyone else......make it a hard pass. 1 star (*).
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