The Watchers

Night Shyamalan, famous for "The Sixth Sense", never achieved the same impact again, and the curse seems to have passed on to his daughter, director of this film. Despite excellent cinematography and an intriguing premise, the development becomes silly and childish.

Some of the worst cinematography I’ve ever seen and Star Wars prequels-dialogue bad. Felt like it was either written by A.I. or someone who’s only seen M Night Shymalan’s films.

The first hour is low-key interesting and not without skill, despite some rather awful dialogue. The final half hour is a boring mess.

It's not bad, good if you're a middle school girl who likes to be scared.

Quite poor in just about every way, really. It feels like Ishana got an interesting idea and then forced a story to support that idea. But that's not the only bad thing, the dialogue is really quite weak and the acting is not good either. I don't think it's worth a watch, really.

Plot 10/20 Fiction 3/20 Casting/Acting 8/20 Worldbuilding 3/20 Entertainment 6/20

Cool how she uses some of her father's trademarks -- final twist, chamber piece microcosm to build its own world and mythology, arresting sense of believing in the power of storytelling, fantasy and unknown --, but execution is a bit all over. Starts pretty promising and loses its mysterious steam every time it tries to move forward initial setup -- last third is just so blatantly expository. Anyways, it's sometimes beautiful to look at -- despite some typical debut show-off redundant framing.

For this level of score you'd think I hated this. I really didn't. What it did well was keep me invested until the end. I didn't feel like anything was done very well or even above average, but I still wasn't checking to see how long was left. Fanning was good, Campbell was underused or perhaps miscast for this role. She's several levels above the 2d character she was given. Some fun meta pokes here and there, but it felt like more of a pilot episode to a new show than full story. 5.1

Metaphorically depicts about reality tv show. Loved it

This sucked. Felt like a video game in the worst ways possible. After it’s over I just say there thinking oh that’s it? That’s the whole movie? You can’t be such an obvious nepo baby and make something this bad smh.

The Watchers, a depressive folk horror story about loneliness and isolation, is unfortunately a big disappointment. Although it at least manages to appeal to the eye with its creative cinematography, it is generally very boring. The performances of all the actors, especially Dakota Fanning, are extremely good, but they fall victim to the bad dialogues and mediocre script given to them. In short, The Watchers will be remembered as Ishana Shyamalan's immature work.

The good news first—there’s some visual flair on display. The bad news is everything else. The dialogue might be the worst this decade so far. Compare this to a similar-storied film like Unwelcome which is wildly entertaining and every line slaps!

Très perfectible. La mise en scène est de qualité, Dakota Fanning une héroïne qui prend de bonnes décisions et il y a de la tension. Les créatures apparaissent au bon moment, mais je regrette que l'espace hyper-tenseur soit plombé par une double intrigue fantastique, avec des fées et d'autres conneries inutiles.

Pretty decent but the final stretch is wildly out of place.

Quite mediocre but not nearly as bad as I was led to believe. It's just not fleshed out in a particularly interesting way, and the script is generic.

Has moments, but too middling and completely sunk by two seriously brutal moments at the film's second and third act reveals. Flopping fairies.

A real finger-drummer. So much waiting around that it begins to feel like a never-ending first act. Flirts with being a commentary on generative AI, but doesn't really have anything to say (an irony considering how much these characters are constantly babbling even when they really don't need to be doing so).

This horror flick by Ishana Night, daughter of iconic thriller writer/director M. Night Shyamalan is unfortunately a very flat filmmaking debut. The plot feels held together with toothpicks and bubblegum in the first two acts, before completely abandoning any logical sense by the third act. At first, some of the plotholes are forgivable, but by midway, the confusion has already overstayed its welcome. Pretty enough with a decent horror aesthetic, but this alone does not save the film.