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The life of The Watchers is straightforward. Tasked with delivering a bird to Belfast, Mina (Dakota Fanning), lost her mother 15 years earlier, On the journey she becomes lost in an unmapped Irish forest and encounters Daniel (Oliver Finnegan), Ciara (Georgina Campbell), and Madeline (Olwen Fouéré), who had been caught there for some time. Madeline tells Mina about the rules for surviving and the Watchers—supernatural beings who monitor them from twilight to sunrise. At first, the story's unsettling, expansive woodland and creatures seen only in the periphery easily causes one to get lost in it.
Though it forces viewers to consider the film's flaws, plot contrivances, and shaky character journeys — doubtful the director's objective - the Twist Ending gives everything away.
Ishana Night Shyamalan follows in the footsteps of her father M. Night Shyamalan and makes her directing debut with the interesting horror picture The Watchers, which is wildly inconsistent at parts. One thing is for certain: the Shyamalans' fondness of a surprise ending twists everything for The Watchers. The younger Shyamalan, who also authored the script, kept onto the most vital piece of information until the very end, warping all that came before, instead of becoming a fascinating study of changeling mythology and tradition.
The last fifteen minutes totally lost me, and I blasted a bigger hole in the already unstable film narrative. It made me doubt everything, but not in a constructive way. The Watchers' ending doesn't make sense; it sends us down a road where a reveal is about to happen but veers off course as though terrified we would have come too near to something more sensible. Deeply defective, the Watchers' shortcomings lead to their demise. Shyamalan seems to have absorbed some of her father's worst filmmaking impulses, which utterly ruins the movie.
The cast's performances kept me watching even as I started to consider some of the glaring narrative gaps. Clearly committed to their characters, Fanning et al. make a great job of presenting their traumas and worries to us. We want them to leave the wilderness alive. Fouéré's intensity pulled me back in when my head started to doubt them. I sensed her anguish as Campbell's Ciara called out for her husband. Their performances save the movie from becoming totally unwatchable by making The Watchers more relevant than I could have ever imagined.
Given the characters hold the narrative together, their backstories are meager. Minor character Professor Kilmartin (John Lynch) is the only one whose presence in the forest has real heft. Mina is drawn into the forest, and we know why; but, her guilt is restricting and her love of assuming another identity even more so. Still, the actors labor to make their characters seem like fully realized persons in spite of limitations. Though I cannot suggest The Watchers, at least the performers will keep you somewhat engaged in the narrative – up to a point.
Based on the book A.M. Shine, The Watchers banks on the eeriness of the animals, their freakishly lengthy figures, and their passion for emulating people, studying them as though they’s interesting experiment. They get enraged quickly, hence I was happy to let Shyamalan's story carry me anywhere it decided to go. Sadly, the result awakened me to the several flaws in the movie, the first of which was its logic. Though there isn't much of it, at first it's not very clear skated by the unknown and the characters' resolve to fight however they can.
Though it forces viewers to consider the film's flaws, plot contrivances, and shaky character journeys — doubtful the director's objective - the Twist Ending gives everything away. Though its foundation is the basis of the plot, the supernatural horror The Watchers creates does not quite believe in its power. Information meant to highlight the story is often given out too readily, and Shyamalan waits until the movie is almost over to offer a few additional bits that would have been better placed earlier in the movie for some unclear reason.
There isn't much reason to this unearthly horror. Shyamalan tracks one of the characters slowly, and I was ready to welcome the discovery since, for this individual, they would at least track. Furthermore, I would like to read the book since the film's twist is so weak and ridiculous; it lacks legs to support. Shyamalan might not trust her audience enough, but the ending is significantly less scary and more gimmicky than anything. The Watchers possessed possibilities as well. Though Shyamalan is a talented director with strong sense of tone, the writing cuts too many shortcuts.
Inspired by A.M. Shine's book, The Watchers centers Mina (Dakota Fanning), a twenty-eight-year-old artist left in the middle of an Irish forest. Her brief solace at finding cover is dashed when she comes into other people in the same situation; but, they are hunted every night by invisible animals.