Review: The Watchers/The Watched

Director:  Ishana Night Shyamalan

Stars:  Dakota Fanning, Olwen Fouéré, Georgina Campbell

This is probably somewhat frustrating. You’re one of the youngest, freshest filmmakers operating in Hollywood (nothing like a bit of nepotism to fast track your career), your dad’s helped shepherd your very-on-brand mystery thriller into cinemas worldwide but, because of minutiae to do with rights and territories, nobody’s quite sure what your calling card is even called.

Billed and advertised as The Watchers some places, The Watched in others, its an infuriating promotional snafu for a movie that itself wrestles with identity. Hell, it’s almost fitting. But the alternate titles hold the ability to weight the film very differently, positioning us on one side or the other of a pane of two-way glass.

Adapted from a novel by A.M. Shine, it goes a little something like this. Mina (a game Dakota Fanning) is an American in Ireland who finds herself stranded in a seemingly endless forest in the country’s western-most wilds. Nursing the childhood trauma (obvs) of her mother’s untimely death, Mina discovers that this is no ordinary forest when a woman named Madeline (Olwen Fouéré) hastens her into the ‘coop’; a concrete box with a two-way mirror wall that’ll keep her safe from the unseen ‘watchers’ in the woods. Also trapped are Clara (Georgina Campbell), who likes dancing, and Daniel (Oliver Finnegan), who seems like he probably doesn’t usually get out much.

There’s plenty of conjecture – and, later on, lore – about who or what the ‘watchers’ in this scenario are. Indeed, this appears to have been the main steer of the source material, tonally positioning the movie somewhere between Twilight and True Blood in terms of (un)seriousness (and no, they’re not vampires). Less fleshed out are our trapped humans, none of whom speak like a convincing person, each feathered – barely – with rudimentary traits or backstory.

This could be deliberate. Once we know a little about the situation, it’s all-too-easy to suspect that someone in the group isn’t who they’re claiming to be (indeed, one of the film’s twists is cinder-block-to-the-head obvious from basically the beginning). But with four cyphers puzzling out the forest’s mysteries, we’re left in a mire of clumsily written exposition and precious little else. In terms of what to expect along the way? Well, someone’s evidently a big fan of LOST. The Abrams/Cuse/Lindelof juggernaut is visually referenced time and again, but the mood and sensibility of the piece is more akin to LOST‘s present garbled successor; From.

Without spoiling too much, it’s possible that The Watchers/The Watched can be read as something of a commentary on our present apprehensions about AI technology, and the faltering process of mimicry that has many of us wondering just how long a leash such innovation is going to be allowed. There’s also, fleetingly, something here that echoes tensions of ownership and control that’s been at the heart of Irish independence for centuries. But such readings are effectively lost in the chaos of the movie’s wild-out third act, where it’s origins as an unabashed fantasy novel really start to show themselves. Fun as it all is in the moment, even a cursory cross-examination in the aftermath is awash with contrivances, conveniences and a lot of false logic.

Ishana Night Shyamalan shows some solid instincts here, but with daddy operating so closely as a producer it can be impossible to tell what’s hers and what’s the hand resting on her shoulder. Still, functionally and visually, there’s enough nous displayed to suggest she could easily make it on her own. Those kid gloves need to come off. For her own evolution as a storyteller, and to divorce her choices and techniques a little from her father’s, as this effort very much plays within the family sandbox.

On the one hand that’s kind of sweet and endearing. That the family brand is surviving generations. On the other, The Watchers/The Watched evidences a clear identity crisis beyond the struggles of it’s captives.