The best character in The Watchers is the foreboding forest in Ireland. Nothing but a few sound effects are used to make it both beautiful and creepy at the same time. Although the CGI murder of crows (?) that fly through the place and that creepy sign made from a human skeleton does add a few chills as well. The forest provides the backdrop for an unsettling scene with a man lost in the thick of it. He’s running for his life. From what or who he’s running from isn’t shown, but it goes without saying, it doesn’t end well for him.

From there, the story moves to Mina (Dakota Fanning) vaping at the counter at the pet store where she works. Clearly the store isn’t a great fit for her. Shes an unappreciated artist who is just surviving. She’s estranged from her sister Jennifer, her only relative since their mother passed away years earlier. Her boss asks her to vape outside as it disturbs the animals in the shop and then he asks her to deliver a rare parrot to a customer who lives very far from town. She agrees but is soon to regret it.

Mina drives toward that same spooky forest and eventually the paved road turns to a dirt road leading through the forest. And then the car dies. Stranded, Mina leaves her car with parrot in tow looking for help. It’s gets dark, she hears spooky sounds, the whole nine yards. Out of nowhere, Madeline (Olwen Fouéré) appears offering shelter from the beasts who roam through the woods.

Within this cabin, she sees that one wall is a large mirror. Nina meets young bride Ciara (Georgina Campbell) and smart aleck teen, Daniel (Oliver Finnegan) who waste no time to tell Nina that she needs to stand in line with the rest of them in front of the mirror which turns out to be a two-way mirror so that these odd beings can watch what goes on inside the cabin. In a way, they are an exhibit much like a zoo. The creatures only come to watch during nighttime. By morning, they are gone making it safe to venture outside, hunt for food and look for supplies, etc. Nina struggles with trusting these strangers, believing the odd tales they tell, wanting to leave but fearing that she won’t make it out alive. Days turn into months and tensions begin to run high both inside and outside the cabin.

The Watchers is directed by Ishana Night Shyamalan, the daughter of M. Night Shyamalan who has had his share of hits and misses from The Sixth Sense to Knock at the Cabin. This is her first movie as a director and proves that she has a promising future in front of her if she can avoid the mistakes her father has made over the years. The Watchers, which is based on the novel of the same name by A.M. Shine, is just the sort of project that her father would take on complete with the signature twist at the end. I know that she wants to stand out from her father’s work, but honestly, Watchers plays very much like her father’s material, but that isn’t a bad thing really.

This isn’t a perfect movie, but for what it is, it is well-told. There is much too much exposition for my liking and the story’s pacing is a bit slow. The characters step around a number of plot holes. (Why is this cabin so modern-looking on the outside? Who built it and how? How come Daniel’s hair never gets longer?).

A lot more could have been done with these four strangers living under one roof too. While you genuinely want these characters to survive, it’s hard to get emotionally invested in them as the movie doesn’t share give much information about who they are or where they come from. Even the flashbacks to Nina’s past life are short. This is something that I do think M. Night would have improved on if this were his film.

There is a surprisingly lack of dread about this movie. It is horrific at times, but not really all that scary as we’ve seen a lot of this stuff in other movies. Still, it kept my attention throughout as I was trying to figure out this mystery. It gets substantially more interesting during the last quarter of the film giving a fairly satisfactory ending to this story.

The sequel to the book comes out later this year, but unless The Watchers becomes a surprise hit, I doubt that we’ll see a sequel to the movie anytime soon.

Main Image: Olwen Fouéré, Oliver Finnegan, Dakota Fanning and Georgina Campbell