This weekend I took some time to watch several movies I had pending. Among the ones I once wanted to watch is The Watchers, which I remembered thanks to a video clip talking about its director, Ishana Shyamalan, daughter of the famous director M. Night Shyamalan, who is globally known for his psychological thriller, horror, and science fiction films, such as the acclaimed The Sixth Sense (1999).
The Watchers was Ishana's directorial debut, and I suppose, influenced by her father's career, that's why she wrote this psychological horror story. The premise tells the story of Mina (Dakota Fanning), a lonely young woman who, during a trip, gets trapped in a creepy forest in Ireland. Unsurprisingly, she gets lost trying to find her way out and finds a shelter with a large glass window, where three other people survive under one rule: every night, they must stand in front of the one-way window to be watched by mysterious creatures.
At first, the movie hooked me because it brilliantly builds a scene of claustrophobic isolation, with the uncertainty of what lies on the other side of the mirror, while they survive by finding food the few times they can go out. That dark touch, similar to the one in the series From, plus how terrifying the forest itself looks, seemed very fitting to captivate the viewer.
But the film begins to lose this charm when it abandons all this visual horror to start revealing why these things are happening through long dialogues and explanations from its characters. Personally, I think Irish folklore is terrifying and fascinating on its own, but it isn't taken advantage of when you have to explain it constantly and repetitively.
Not to mention Dakota Fanning's performance; she has had good performances before, but here it was so flat and dull that I couldn't believe it. She seemed to have a poker face at all times, as if nothing scared her. She delivered her lines as if forced, almost mechanically. I honestly don't know what happened to her, because if she had done better, she might have maintained the connection with the story and I wouldn't have lost interest so quickly.
This movie might have worked for fans of Irish folklore if they ignored its bad script, but for me, it only had its charm at the beginning; the rest becomes clumsy, over-explained, and deeply boring. They wanted to cover so many themes like trauma, colonialism, and folklore, and it ended up feeling superficial.
Media from TMBD gallery
Rating: 50/100
