“The Watchers,” Ishana Night Shyamalan’s feature directorial debut, presents a thrilling tale of a young woman named Mina who gets trapped in the countryside of Ireland and finds shelter in a mysterious compound. Encountering questionable characters, Mina decides they all must work together to survive and escape the strange beasts that lurk in the forest at night. 

The plot of “The Watchers” proves intriguing by keeping the audience searching for answers throughout the flick. Following in the same genre as her father, M. Night Shyamalan, who also produced the movie, Ishana Night Shyamalan uses thrilling suspense to guide the story. Ishana Night Shyamalan lets the audience ride out the movie in the dark along with Mina, who is persistent in escaping her captivity and unearthing the truth about the watchers. 

Filmed in the Irish countryside, the movie brims with shots of the overgrown green forest and gives the viewer an idea of the expansive land the characters are lost in. However, while creating majestic daytime scenery, the dense forest also couples well with the pitch-black nights and allows the viewer’s imagination to build around the creepiness of the obscure creatures. Along with the location, the “coop” where Mina finds shelter adds to the mystery of the forest and proves fitting for the building of suspense in the film.

Dakota Fanning, who plays Mina, effectively encapsulates her character as a nonchalant adult in her twenties haunted by her mother’s untimely death. Although her background is a side plot in the film, Fanning skillfully makes Mina’s history feel essential to her character’s growth and adds a necessary reality to the fantasy elements of the movie. Fanning’s co-stars, who act as Mina’s also stranded peers, nail their roles as distressed and questionable folks who feel desperate to find a way out of their captivity. Together the cast allows for the audience to get lost with them in the eerie forest.

While the plot of the movie effectively keeps the viewer intrigued and guessing, the film can feel roughly transitioned while moving through the story. However, as an adaptation from Irish horror novelist A.M. Shine’s novel by the same name, the job of seamlessly telling a bigger story within the allotted time on screen proves difficult due to less room for details to advance the story. 

While the film is appropriately rated PG-13, the movie could have benefited from more R-rated horror, such as some gory shots to more effectively show the horror it attempts to invoke. However, by not going over the top with the fear factor, the movie provides a good summer feature that teenagers and adults can enjoy while escaping the Texas heat. 

“The Watchers” makes for a solid debut by Ishana Night Shyamalan on her first feature film while leaving viewers bought into her style of storytelling and asking the question: “What can we expect from her next?” 

3 erie coops out of 5