The Watchers
The Watchers
A young artist gets stranded in an extensive, immaculate forest in western Ireland, where, after finding shelter, she becomes trapped alongside three strangers, stalked by mysterious creatures each night.
Kevin Ward reviewedJuly 1, 2025
The Watchers is a solid debut feature with some striking visuals and some moments of genuine intrigue even if the script gets bogged down by frustrating character decisions and exposition dumps by the end.
Dakota Fanning stars as Mina in search of her estranged sister, but she finds herself in a eerie forest in Ireland unable to find her way out. She happens across Madeleine (Olwen Fouéré), Ciara (Georgina Campbell), and Daniel (Oliver Finnegan), all similarly stranded in the wood, but having taken refuge in an isolated room with a one-way mirror where unknown entities come to watch them when the sun goes down.
As strange as the setup is, I was very much enjoying the film. The premise felt ripe for a thematic exploration of mimicry, voyeurism, and performative aspects of identity. The group of strangers have to essentially perform each night for this unseen audience but the only real instruction is to be themselves. Mina doesn’t seem to have a real sense of who she actually is. We see flashes of her life in which she liked to dress up in wig and makeup and just go out on the town as someone else, perhaps as a counter to the fact that she has a twin sister, a literal copy of her own genetic makeup, somewhere out in the world. How much of our own identity is simply copying what we see in others?
Stuck in “the coop” as the group has come to refer to their refuge, they do have access to a television and a copy of a Big Brother style reality show Love Island (season 3) that they watch over and over. This voyeurism heavily mirrors their own situation which has the unknown watchers peering in on their lives every evening.
It’s when we begin to find out more about the watchers that the film takes a bit of a turn and instead of going deeper into the thematics, it gets a little too bogged down in establishing the lore of these creatures. Steeped heavily in Irish folklore of faeries and changelings, the film spends much of the final act attempting to explain this world and its inhabitants. Obviously, the idea of changelings still lends itself to the thematic ideas of identity and mimicry, but by the end this aspect seems kind of completely lost.
Still, I mostly enjoyed this film. I think Ishana shows significant promise as a director. I had actually watched all of the Apple TV series Servant and I believe she directed several episodes. I will be curious to see what she has up next.