For the past 25 years, we’ve been showing up for M. Night Shyamalan’s career by seeing his work on the big and small screen. His daughter, Ishana Night Shyamalan, has too, but from a much different perspective than most of us can say. Ishana has spent her whole life watching her father make suspenseful movies as a major part of her upbringing. Now that she has her directorial debut, The Watchers, under her belt, we can witness what she’s learned over the years.
When CinemaBlend sat down with the new filmmaker, I asked Ishana Night Shymalan how growing up on movie sets influenced how she handles bringing tension to the set of The Watchers. Here’s what she said:
I mean, I think I learned so many things I think through my opportunity to sort of observe my dad on sets and things like that. I think the process of creating suspense is a very difficult thing and requires like a lot of curation, almost. And then, release, to create something that feels very naturally scary. And I very much operated under the belief that whatever's outside of the frame is always scarier than what's in the frame because it's your imagination running wild. So I tried to sort of play with that feeling throughout the movie.
Of course, Ishana Night Shymalan has a great answer to this! She learned from one of the best! As the director shared, she has spent many hours over the years observing her dad make horror movies before going on to working beside him on his recent projects. Ishana served as the second unit director on his last two movies, Old and Knock at the Cabin, along with writing and directing multiple episodes of the Apple TV+ series Servant.
When I spoke to Ishana prior, she told me that she knew there would “inevitably” be a “level of similarity” between her and M. Night Shyamalan between their genetics and shared lives. However, she also hopes audiences will “feel the difference” within her own work here with The Watchers. Aside from the new movie adapting A.M. Shine’s novel of the same name, Ishana told us she is greatly influenced by Hayao Miyazaki.
The Watchers follows Dakota Fanning’s Mina, who gets stranded in a forest in Ireland and then finds herself trapped with three strangers in a bunker as they hide from the mysterious “watchers.” Just like the novel its based on, the new movie has roots in Irish folklore, bringing dark fantasy elements to the big screen with her directorial debut.
As she suspected, when critics who have seen The Watchers are comparing her work to M. Night’s. CinemaBlend’s own The Watchers review celebrated the new director for bearing “ripe and juicy horror fruits”, but found there is “room for growth” when it comes to her credit writing the movie’s screenplay. You can decide yourself right now, as The Watchers is now playing in theaters. Check out what other upcoming horror movies are on the way next here on CinemaBlend.
