Taglines: They are watching.
The Watchers follows Mina, a 28-year old artist who gets stranded in an expansive, untouched forest in western Ireland. When Mina finds shelter, she unknowingly becomes trapped alongside three strangers that are watched and stalked by mysterious creatures each night.
This forest isn’t charted on any map. Every car breaks down at its treeline. Mina’s is no different. Left stranded, she is forced into the dark woodland only to find a woman shouting, urging Mina to run to a concrete bunker. As the door slams behind her, the building is besieged by screams. Mina finds herself in a room with a wall of glass, and an electric light that activates at nightfall, when the Watchers come above ground. These creatures emerge to observe their captive humans and terrible things happen to anyone who doesn’t reach the bunker in time.
The Watchers (titled The Watched in the United Kingdom and Ireland) is a 2024 American supernatural horror film written and directed by Ishana Night Shyamalan in her directorial debut, produced by M. Night Shyamalan, and based on the 2022 novel of the same name by A. M. Shine. It stars Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouere, and Oliver Finnegan.
Warner Bros. Pictures acquired The Watchers, and released the film theatrically in the United States on June 7, 2024. It received negative reviews from critics and has grossed $29.9 million worldwide.
Principal photography took place in Dublin, Wicklow and Galway from July to September 2023. In mid-July, production was granted an interim agreement to continue filming during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. It was theatrically released by Warner Bros. Pictures on June 7, 2024.
About the Story
Mina, an American immigrant working in a pet shop in Galway, Ireland, struggles to come to terms with the death of her mother, which she inadvertently caused fifteen years prior, and is estranged from her twin sister Lucy. Mina’s boss tasks her with delivering a valuable parrot to a zoo in Belfast. En route, her car breaks down, stranding her in a forest.
Lost, she names the parrot Darwin. She follows an old woman, Madeline, to a bunker-like building, nicknamed ‘The Coop’, and meets two other occupants, Ciara and Daniel. Madeline explains that mysterious entities called ‘The Watchers’ observe the group through the mirrored window of the Coop every night.
Madeline explains the rules to Mina: at night the Watchers kill anyone outside the Coop, and nobody must enter the Burrows, the underground tunnels where the Watchers retreat during the day because of their aversion to sunlight. The group has been stranded in the forest for several months without encountering a Watcher; Ciara’s husband John left the Coop days ago but has not returned.
Daniel helps Mina explore a Burrow, where she unearths several items like a camcorder and a bicycle and narrowly escapes a Watcher. That night, John appears at the Coop but Madeline refuses to let him in. When “John” fails to verify himself to Ciara, he appears to be dragged away. The Watchers crack the mirror; Madeline returns the items to the Burrow to appease them.
As winter falls, the group begins to turn hostile against one another. Daniel locks Mina and Madeline out of the Coop one night, forcing them to seek shelter in the forest. They witness the Watchers, humanoid creatures that imitate the Coop’s occupants and react angrily to Madeline and Mina’s absence. The pair get back into the Coop and Madeline explains that the Watchers are shapeshifting Fairies attempting to learn how to better mimic humans. The Watchers attack the Coop.
The group escapes through a hidden door leading to an underground study. Mina uncovers video diaries of Professor Rory Kilmartin, the Coop’s creator. Kilmartin had come to the forest to study the creatures and had even captured one of them and bonded with it. In his last entry, the despondent professor explains how to escape from the forest and requests that his research be destroyed. The video ends with his climbing back into the Coop to kill the captured Watcher and himself.
The next day, the group follows the professor’s directions and uses Darwin to guide them to the river at the edge of the forest. On the way, Madeline shows them a stone marker, explaining that humans had warred against the Fairies, who were deprived of their wings, driven underground, and imprisoned in the forest. Upon reaching the professor’s boat, a Watcher mimicking John kills Daniel. The others take the boat and finally arrive back into civilization. On the road, a bus stops for them, and the driver says he can take them to the next city.
The Watchers (2024)
Directed by: Ishana Night Shyamalan
Starring: Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouéré, Hannah Howland, Siobhan Hewlett, Alistair Brammer, Oliver Finnegan, Shane O’Regan, Anthony Morris, Jacob Greenway, Emily Dargan
Screenplay by: Ishana Night Shyamalan
Production Design by: Ferdia Murphy
Cinematography by: Eli Arenson
Set Decoration by: Jil Turner
Art Direction by: Gary McGinty, Nenazoma McNamee, Gavin Murphy, Nigel Pollock
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence, terror and some thematic elements.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: June 7, 2024
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