Legendary filmmaker and master of the plot twist, M. Night Shyamalan, acts as producer for this serviceable horror offering from his daughter Ishana Night Shyamalan. Titled The Watched in the UK and Ireland – it is known by The Watchers elsewhere – the film is an adaptation of the gothic novel by the same name by Irish writer A. M. Shine.
The film stars Dakota Fanning (Hide and Seek, War of the Worlds, The Equalizer 3), Olwen Fouéré (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, The Northman), Georgina Campbell (Barbarian) and Oliver Finnegan (Outlander).
Mina (Fanning), a troubled young artist working in a pet shop in the Republic of Ireland is tasked with delivering a parrot bought by a customer on the other side of the country. A couple of hours into her journey, Mina gets stranded in an mysterious, untouched forest when her car breaks down.
Lost in the forest with the sun about to set, Mina becomes the target of mysterious creatures. When she comes across a shelter in the forest, Mina becomes trapped alongside three other strangers who have all suffered the same fate as hers. She soon learns that there is no way out of the forest, but as long as she follows the rules relayed to her by taciturn mother-figure Madeline (Fouéré), she might just be able to survive her ordeal.
Peppered throughout with some rather flimsily constructed jump-scares and a plot with more holes than a Swiss cheese factory, The Watched often feels contrived and laboured throughout. Writer-director Ishana Night Shyamalan riffs on the same themes as her famous father, but misses the mark tonally with a screenplay that feels muddles and devoid of real scares.
Fanning delivers a robust performance throughout as a young woman plagued by childhood trauma and guilt. But while the rest of the cast are given very little to work with, it falls upon Fouéré to try and salvage this second rate mystery thriller from being a complete disaster.
Plot-holes and lack of real jump-scares aside, there are still some rather decent ideas relating to ancient Irish folklore, I just wish that the execution had been slightly more coherent.
