From producer M. Night Shyamalan comes The Watchers, written for the screen and directed by Ishana Night Shyamalan and based on the novel by A.M. Shine.
The film follows Mina, a 28-year-old artist, who gets stranded in an expansive, untouched forest in western Ireland. When Mina finds shelter, she unknowingly takes her place alongside three strangers who are watched and stalked by mysterious creatures each night. You can’t see them, but they see everything.
With The Watchers releasing in Australian cinemas on June 6, Nick L’Barrow had the chance to chat with first time feature filmmaker, and daughter of M. Night Shyamalan, Ishana Night Shyamalan, about balancing story and scares, creating shots that push the narrative, and whether Ishana has a great reality TV idea ready to make!
Nick: Ishana, it’s so good to meet you! How are you today?
Ishana Night Shyamalan: I’m good! So good to meet you and thank you for doing this! I’m excited to talk to you.
Nick: Oh my god, no! I appreciate you taking the time. I want to congratulate you on the film, but I also have to mention that I’m a diehard fan of Servant…
Ishana Night Shyamalan: Oh cool!
Nick: And I genuinely think the season three finale, Mama, is the best episode of that show! So, it’s very exciting for me to chat with you today!
Ishana Night Shyamalan: [laughs] That’s amazing! Thank you!
Nick: And I want to start with what might be the most important question you get this entire junket – have you sold the rights to Lair of Love yet? Because I think you’ve created a cash-cow with that!
Ishana Night Shyamalan: [laughs] Yeah, you know, it’s interesting because I really loved making that! When we were making that, it was a one-day shoot, and I was like, “Wait! Should I be doing this instead?”
It was so fun. It’s such a compelling, weird art form, that kind of reality TV setup. So, I definitely want to continue to explore that in some way.
Nick: I mean, you’re mastering horror as a director, and now reality TV is on the cards, so you’ve got options for your career! But I do have plenty of questions about The Watchers, and I want to kick it off here because I’m curious to get your take on this as a horror filmmaker. I feel like there’s three types of horror: disturbing, shocking, and suspenseful horror. Do you agree, and what horror tendency do you feel you learn towards as a horror filmmaker?
Ishana Night Shyamalan: I mean, it’s something I have been considering. I think where this movie sits… it’s a suspense movie. It’s sort of about the expectation of being afraid. I really enjoy that type of horror. That sort of Under the Skin, like It Follows, type of approach to horror.
You’re kind of scared and uncomfortable, and you don’t really know why! That to me, that feeling of anxiety, that’s what I’m drawn to more than the heavy-handed stuff. I think it’s sort of the way I experience fear, for sure.
Nick: I really feel like that is the tone of The Watchers, for sure. I’m curious to know how this story evolved from book, to script, to screen in a visual sense for you? Was what we see on screen quite close to what you envisioned when reading the book?
Ishana Night Shyamalan: I mean, it was very much the movie as it exists, and particularly the sets are what I visualised the first time I read the book. It was very much like… I literally saw these spaces in my mind. Mena’s apartment, the different spaces that you see, and then we went off that when I kind of started talking to my production designer very early on.
And we basically just built exactly what I had envisioned in my mind, which was so wonderful. And then of course, you’re inspired by different things and drawing from other art, different styles of architecture and images and things like that. It’s so cool because it really does exist as the visual experience I had when reading the book.
Nick: Another visual aspect of the film that is really integral to the story is the use of mirrors. I did particularly love the bathroom mirror shot early in the film where the camera goes over Mina’s head! I can imagine that’s not necessarily the easiest thing to film, so could you break down the technicalities that go into film all of those scenes involving mirrors?
Ishana Night Shyamalan: Okay, that shot is a very fun one to talk about! That’s heavily inspired by a shot in La Haine! That shot is completely practical, and we built a bathroom set, and then another bathroom set that was reversed. We had Dakota [Fanning] on one side and a body double on the other, then we just mimicked the camera move from La Haine.
That’s really one of the most fun… that was candy for Eli [Arenson, cinematographer]. It was so fun, but it also adds this unease. We were doing all kinds of little tricks like that all over the place and I think it gives this feeling of surrealism to the film.
Nick: Then you have a giant mirror in the main set of this film that the characters heavily interact with, which leads to some awesome shots. What were some of the logistics in pulling those mirror shots off?
Ishana Night Shyamalan: I think some of our more complex shots in the movie, we could definitely see cameras in the mirror and had to super impose and take out the cameras. But anytime we could, we would try and do it in a practical way to avoid that need.
It was really just about finding the right angles where we could move the cameras without seeing ourselves. And what ended up happening was when we were shooting those interior coupe scenes, no one else could be in the space. So it was really just our actors and the camera, and everyone else was outside, which gave them, I think, this sense of being on stage. Kind of having their own theatre black box.
Nick: I don’t know if you can tell, I’m obsessed with how this movie looks…
Ishana Night Shyamalan: I love it! It’s my favourite thing to talk about!
Nick: That’s great! Well, I’m curious to know what narrative decisions go into choosing certain shots. There is a brilliant 360-degree shot that goes from inside the coupe and looks out in the woods very ominously and is very effective in being creepy. But I’d love to know the process of choosing a certain shot for a certain point in the film?
Ishana Night Shyamalan: I think for me, I love the process of shotmaking. I think it’s always about the flow of shots when I’m imaging the shotmaking. I grew up dancing, like doing a lot of ballet. So, I think of it very much in that way where one shot connects to the next. It’s really about the sort of flow of movement and rhythm of those scenes.
I storyboarded everything ahead of time, and then my DP [Eli Arenson] and I kind of played around with things. He was really wonderful about experimenting. A lot of shots in the movie are like, “How can we do this thing?” And just the fun of the challenge of building those shots.
But it was very much all about emanating what Mina is experiencing. And particularly the 360 shot is about her doubting what she’s been told basically. That’s what the feeling of the 360 gives. Are we going to see something? Or are we not?
Nick: From a screenwriting perspective, how much focus goes into balancing story and scares. It can be a tough thing for horror, I can imagine, because you want your film to be scary, but you want the audience to be invested in the characters and their story too, right?
Ishana Night Shyamalan: Definitely! I think for whatever reasons, it’s not necessarily something that comes naturally to me, that balance of things. It’s something I was kind of actively working at, how to structure the emotional storytelling with the fear element of it.
My main intention was basically that once you enter that feeling, you can’t get out of it. You’re always at a baseline level of unease, and it just has to grow, and grow, and grow.
It was very much mathematical. I was doing a lot of writing on notecards, playing around with the puzzle pieces. Like restructuring it all was my favourite thing to do. Just looking at something that’s finished and being like, “I could actually put this piece here, and this piece here!” It was a lot of shuffling things until it sort of existed into this form.
Nick: As we begin to wrap up, I’d love to find out what evolution of your own filmmaking journey has been like leading up to The Watchers! You’ve directed music videos for your sister, you’ve done TV and second unit directing. What were some of the key takeaways from those experiences that helped you on your first feature film?
Ishana Night Shyamalan: I mean, it was quite literally going through the baby steps first. Basically doing the music videos were like a hyper-microcosm version of what this feature film experience has been like. And then TV was one step further in that arena.
It was experiencing and learning the techniques in those shorter form environments for me, and it was always with the intention of wanting to do a feature, which I consider one of the most sacred art forms ever!
Yeah, it was building myself up until I felt like I was worthy of that art form. I felt so excited to sort of jump into this challenge.
Nick: Well, as a horror fan and a fan of your work so far, I’m excited to see what you do next! Thank you so much for chatting with me today! I appreciate you taking the time!
Ishana Night Shyamalan: This was such a fun chat! Thank you so much!
Thank you to Ishana for her time, and to Warner Bros. Pictures for organsing the interview. The Watchers is in cinemas June 6.
