M. Night Shyamalan has been spooking (mainstream) audiences since earning Academy Award nominations with 1999’s The Sixth Sense. Since that time, he’s been ebbing and flowing but still decidedly kicking with the likes of Dave Bautista, and now, his daughter is embarking upon her own seat-handle-gripping adventures with The Watchers. Let’s talk about what we know about the movie so far.
The Watchers is a gothic horror feature film based upon A.M. Shine’s same-named novel. Dakota Fanning stars as Mina, who ends up in a Shyamalan-esque forest because that is how this family rolls (which also makes sense because Ishana has helped direct Servant, her father’s Apple TV+ series). Our heroine “gets stranded in an expansive, untouched forest in western Ireland. When Mina finds shelter, she unknowingly becomes trapped alongside three strangers who are watched and stalked by mysterious creatures each night.”
As if that wasn’t troubling enough, the group apparently lives behind a one-sided mirror of sorts: “You can’t see them, but they see everything.”
As the below trailer will reveal, the creatures establish rules that must be followed apparently upon penalty of death. Between this movie, The Village, and The Happening, this family has plenty to say about nature and how it really doesn’t appreciate humanity.
The film also includes performances by Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouere, and Oliver Finnegan.
The Watchers arrives on June 7, which could add up to a swell summer for horror movies, given that Russell Crowe will debut in The Exorcism on the same day. Additionally, The Strangers reboot/revival will also be in theaters a few weeks earlier. It will be triple the Stranger Danger.
