Watch out for ‘The Watchers’

Ishana Shyamalan, daughter of M. Night, struggles to balance storytelling and atmosphere in her uneven supernatural thriller starring Dakota Fanning.

By James Verniere/Boston Movie News

Ishana Shyamalan, who has served as producer and director for her father M. Night Shyamalan’s Apple TV+ series “Servant” (he’s an executive producer), makes her feature film debut with “The Watchers,” a supernatural thriller based on a 2022 novel by Irish Gothic author A.M. Shine. Also produced by Shyamalan’s father, the film features Dakota Fanning as notably-named American artist and occasionally promiscuous Irish pet shop worker Mina. Sent to deliver a golden conure, a gold-colored parrot that can speak, Mina is soon predictably lost, without phone service, and broken down.

Stranded in a vast “Blair Witch Project”-like wood in Ireland, the birthplace of “Dracula” author Bram Stoker, Mina finds shelter along with three other people in a bunker-like dwelling called “the coop,” which is oddly equipped with a giant two-way mirror. The other people include a white-haired woman named Madeline (Olwen Fouere, “The Northman”), who appears to know the most about the mysteries of the woods and the creatures that inhabit it; dancer Ciara (Georgina Campbell, “Barbarian”), whose husband is missing; and Daniel (Oliver Finnegan), a hot-headed, young Irishman. In a development worthy of England’s ghost story, master Algernon Blackwood, Mina, and her companions are trapped, observed, and stalked by what one might think of as the spawn of the dark, primeval forest. The humans must be inside the coop by nightfall, standing in front of the mirror.

Huh? The set-up is aimed at the most credulous in the audience. You could say that the “plot” is little more than a play upon our fear of the dark (and the dark woods). Or is this “A Quiet Place” with noise? The film plays loosely with the details. The coop is an impressive concrete structure with a steel door. However, it does not appear to have sanitation (Daniel remarks about “a bucket”). The captives supposedly eat what Daniel traps. The bird, named “Darwin” by Mina, comes and goes. The narrative is such thin gruel that I felt as starved as the characters. Still, “The Watchers” has its moments, especially when we fear for Fanning’s fate. After all, Fanning, who has that mysterious gift known as a screen presence, has played endangered children in such films as “Man on Fire” (2004), “War of the Worlds” (2005), and “Coraline” (2009). We have feared for Fanning for over 20 years.

Director Shyamalan has compared “The Watchers” to reality TV or some form of commentary upon reality TV. I never watch reality TV, so I’ll take her on her word. In the forest are signs reading, “Point of No Return,” meaning this is as far as someone can get and still get back to the coop before nightfall or something. At sunset, the birds of the forest flee in a giant CG “Batman”-like swarm.

“The Watchers” mixes its reality TV tropes with Irish folklore, fairies, changelings, and fey people. Mina talks about her mother, who died 15 years earlier in an accident, and a sister named, of course, Lucy (Come out, Dracula. We know you are in here somewhere.) Ciara dances to Saint-Saens “The Swan.” Darwin repeats Mina’s mandate, “Try not to die,” comically. Most of the scares are tiresome jump cuts. Mina ventures into a forbidden “burrow,” evoking “The Time Machine” with its Morlocks.

The third act is packed full of action, involving a hidden lair, a professor named Kilmartin (John Lynch, “In the Name of the Father”), a rather too convenient bus to Galway, and a thesis titled “The Halfling Dilemma.” “Follow the birds,” someone is advised. Violins saw away in the score by Abel Korzeniowski (“The Nun”). By the end, we are somewhere in the middle of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and Middle-earth. Instead of ending, “The Watchers” begins again. Follow the birds.

‘The Watchers’

Rating: PG-13, violence, terror, and thematic elements.

Cast: Dakota Fanning, Olwen Fouere, Georgina Campbell

Director: Ishana Shyamalan

Writer: Shyamalan, A.M. Shine

Running Time: 101 minutes

Where to Watch: AMC Boston Common, AMC Causeway, Alamo Drafthouse Seaport and suburban theaters

Grade: B-