Ishana Night Shyamalan carrying on her family’s legacy of horror with ‘The Watchers’
PHILADELPHIA — Ishana Night Shyamalan, daughter of famed filmmaker and horror vet M. Night Shyamalan, is making her contribution to the family legacy with this year’s “The Watchers.”
The film is based on the eponymous 2021 Gothic horror novel by author A.M. Shine, and follows 28-yearold artist Mina (Dakota Fanning), who gets stranded in an “expansive and untouched forest in western Ireland,” per the film’s description. “When Mina finds shelter, she unknowingly becomes trapped alongside three strangers who are watched and stalked by mysterious creatures each night.”
Set to release in North America on June 7, “The Watchers” will mark the 22-year-old filmmaker’s directorial debut. The trailer for the Fanning-led film was released by Warner Brothers on Tuesday.
In the two-minute teaser, as Clara Rockmore’s “The Swan” plays in the background, Mina stares at a mirror wall inside an isolated lodge. She’s told it’s a one-way window, with a haunting audience of “watchers” applauding her and a cast of strangers, played by actors Georgina Campbell, Oliver Finnegan, and Olwen Fouere. “They’ll be very interested in someone new,” Mina is told.
Images of the dark and mystifying Irish forest flash throughout the trailer, with hurls and screams from unknown and invisible creatures growing more audible. “They come every night. They watch us until the sun rises again,” Fanning whispers.
Who is the they? “You can’t see them,” the trailer says. “But they see everything.”
Ishana, wrote the script for the film, and M. Night
Shyamalan serves as a producer alongside Ashwin Rajan and Nimitt Mankad. But it’s not the first time the father-daughter NYU alumni duo has worked together.
For Shyamalan’s summer thriller “Old,” which follows a group of tourists whose resort forces them to age rapidly, Ishana served as the second unit director. She also worked on her father’s Apple TV+ series, “Servant,” and his latest blockbuster “Knock at the Cabin.”
In a 2021 interview with Variety, Ishana talked about going over a dozen storyboards with her father for “Old,” and working with him closely on past projects.
“There was a lot of nervousness going in,” the Baldwin School alumna said. But after cutting her teeth as a director and writer on “Servant,” she was prepared to take on other projects with her father. “It was this incredible, spiritual experience for us. We were together every day on this beach for up to 12 hours a day and in tandem,” she said.
Following the release of
“The Watchers’” trailer, Shyamalan, who grew up in Wynnewood and now lives in Willistown Township, took to X to call his “wonderful” daughter’s debut film a “dazzling” one. ”Ishana has always made me very proud,” he said.
“The Watchers” is being considered by many to be one of the most anticipated horror movies of 2024. With the two Night Shyamalans helming the project, the film may prove that filmmaking talent, like apples, doesn’t fall too far from the tree.
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