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We talked to The Watchers director about how things were filmed behind the scenes.
The Watchers is now playing in theaters, and the new film was written and directed by Ishana Night Shyamalan, the daughter of M. Night Shyamalan. ComicBook recently had the chance to chat with Shyamalan about her feature directorial debut, and she spoke about her love for horror and filming the project in Ireland. We also asked Shyamalan about the sound design and how she pulled ideas from the book in addition to filming the fake reality show that is seen throughout the movie.
“I think sound design – I had a wonderful, wonderful sound designer, Sylvain Bellemare. He’s just like uber talented and cool. But yeah, for me, sound was always a big, big part of how I felt this world was going to come together. So I wrote a lot of it into the script. You’re hearing this thing, feeling this thing. So it was very much a third element of the storytelling that I think I felt how much potential it could do for this genre in this particular world.”
“We shot them,” Shyamalan said of the fake reality show. “That was our first day of shoot. We got these wonderful 10 actors into a house and set up like 14 cameras, and then I wrote a couple of scenes that they could kind of improv off of, and we just shot a full day of content and it was so fun. It was so funny and fun.”
You can watch our interview with Ishana Night Shyamalan at the top of the page.
What Is The Watchers About?
The Watchers follows an artist (Dakota Fanning) named Mina “who gets stranded in an expansive, untouched forest in western Ireland.” Mina eventually finds shelter, but she “unknowingly becomes trapped alongside three strangers who are watched and stalked by mysterious creatures each night.”
The film also stars Georgina Campbell (Barbarian), Oliver Finnegan (Creeped Out, Outlander) and Olwen Fouere (The Northman, The Tourist). Joining writer/director Shyamalan behind the camera are director of photography Eli Arenson (Lamb, Hospitality), production designer Ferdia Murphy (Lola, Finding You), editor Job ter Burg (Benedetta, Elle), and costume design by Frank Gallacher (Sebastian, Aftersun). The music is by Abel Korzeniowski (Till, The Nun). The film is produced by M. Night Shyamalan, Ashwin Rajan, and Nimitt Mankad. The executive producers are Jo Homewood and Stephen Dembitzer.
“Well, it was very much just imagining what the four or five of these people were like, and what they would be like together. Then, as the continual lesson that I learned during the filmmaking process, there’s just a certain alchemy that happens,” the filmmaker revealed during a Q&A in which ComicBook.com was in attendance. “If you’re lucky enough to catch it, you do. With this path, there were all these movements that just led to this group being together. They have such an electric energy when they’re all together. It’s really, really cool. It’s so fun. It felt like theater!”
The Watchers is now playing in theaters.