From the first frame The Watchers shows that debut director Ishana Night Shyamalan has a true talent for film making. The frames are beautiful, the story telling notes are strong. The problem with the film comes not from her skills as a film maker. The problem arises from the fact that there isn't a good story here. She hits the beats and builds the tension and films this gorgeously. But there is no denying the story falls short.
High concept films can be tough. You have to sell the truly unbelievable and make it believable, and if there is a twist, it has to be earned and feel inherently natural. If it feels like things are forced it pulls us out of the story and the whole house of cards can fall down. The story has to resonate and The Watchers doesn't get there.
There are just far too many logical leaps that need to be made to get the high concept plot chugging along. The plot (as in plan not story) is so complicated and relies on so many steps that there ends up needing so much explaining and there are so many times when observant viewers would go "well wait, how did that work? that doesn't make sense!" Time and again I had to ask myself, how could that have developed as in the context of the story things just seem far to convenient.
The first line is voice over where Fanning's character refers to a forest that's "does not appear on any map". Really? People seem to know about it, roads seem to go through it. Did it need to be so cryptically described in a way that within world it could be questioned and disproven even?
All of this makes The Watchers just fall apart so by the time the big "twist" is revealed, I already didn't care. If one is going to build a world the world needs to be work and the world of The Watchers just doesn't no matter how beautiful Shyamalan's film making is.
The Watchers
Starring: Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouéré, Oliver Finnigan, Alistair Brammer, John Lynch
Writer/Director: Ishana Night Shyamalan
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