As Warner Bros. offers a deeper look at its upcoming thriller “The Watchers” with a new trailer, director Ishana Night Shyamalan told IndieWire at the recent Summer of Shyamalan event that audiences should be ready for more twists and turns when the film is released in June.
“It ultimately expands into a sort of dark fairy tale, fantasy essence. And that’s the thing I really love most of all,” said the filmmaker of her feature directorial debut starring Dakota Fanning as a woman who becomes trapped in the forests of western Ireland with three strangers, and is stalked at night by mysterious creatures. “In many ways, it’s using the horror genre to enter another space, and that becomes a surprise of the journey as well. So hopefully people will be vibing with it.”
In a Q&A at the April event, Shyamalan was especially proud to spotlight her quartet of actors. In addition to Fanning, “The Watchers” stars Georgina Campbell of “Barbarian” fame; veteran Irish actress Olwen Fouéré, who the director said “brought this kind of legendary wisdom and technique to the process”; and newcomer Oliver Finnegan, who she called “a supernova [who] does just the most electric things ever on camera.”
As the daughter of writer-director M. Night Shyamalan, who has built a brand on original ideas with unpredictable plot twists, the younger Shyamalan said, “I had initially wanted to do something original and had a couple concepts that I was working on,” but right in the middle of that process, the novel “The Watchers” by A. M. Shine came into her life, “And I was just like, ‘This is it.’”
Though she got her start by working on her father’s projects like “Old” and the Apple TV+ series “Servant,” both original scripts, working on “The Watchers” has made her consider focusing on turning even more books and other written work into her next films.
“Now, retrospectively, the adaptation process is something that I love,” she said. “Having the basis of a story that’s already specific, and already has a mindset in it, and then being able to take that and expand it and play with it, is wonderful,” said Shyamalan. “So I’d be open to doing another one. Absolutely. Or doing an original. Let’s see what happens next.”
Check out the trailer for “The Watchers,” only in theaters on June 14, below.
