If you’re a debut director with a famous parent in your line of work, be prepared – until you’ve made your mark, you’ll only be talked about in the comparative. Perhaps that sounds a little unfair. Perhaps, too, it’s a fair trade for all those open doors into the industry. It was true of Brandon Cronenberg, son of David, and Jennifer Lynch, daughter of that other David. It will now, inevitably be true of Ishana Night Shyamalan, daughter of M Night, who’s graduated from a rigorous training course under her father’s guidance, as a second unit director on his films Old and Knock at the Cabin, and as a director on several episodes of Apple TV+’s Servant, which he executive produced. Here, she directs her first feature, The Watched (or The Watchers, outside of the UK and Ireland).
Yet the comparison, in this case, feels especially useful. Adapted by Ishana from a book by AM Shine, The Watched is immediately reminiscent of M Night’s 2004 offering, The Village, with its cloistered community living under a strict set of rules in order to protect themselves from a monstrous threat out in the woods. A woman, Mina (Dakota Fanning), gets lost out in the wilds of western Ireland. She stumbles across a trio of strangers (played by Georgina Campbell, Oliver Finnegan, and Olwen Fouéré) living under an ominous arrangement: in return for not being torn limb from limb, the humans have to shelter each night in a single, stage-like room known only as “the coop”, and allow unseen creatures to observe them through a large, one-sided window.
