Starring: Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouere, Oliver Finnegan, John Lynch
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Runtime: 102 mins. Reviewed in Jun 2024
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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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.
We are in the west of Ireland, where a young man is stumbling through an isolated forest, climbing and falling from a tree, disappearing. Seems a reasonable start for an eerie terror film, drawing on some of the old tales of fairies, halflings, ancient folk living beneath the surface and emerging to frighten – even in the 21st-century.
Fanning plays an American, Mina, who is working in a shop in Galway, after running away from her sister and the memory of the death of her mother, full of guilt (shown later in the film with startling detail). When she drives to the edge of the forest, audiences will be, rightly, apprehensive. We have seen the signs, ‘Point of No Return’. Mina is lost but is urged by a strange old woman, Madeline (Fouere) to seek refuge in a mysterious concrete bunker there in the middle of the forest.
The film is based on a novel by academic AM Shine, who, being from Western Ireland, is intrigued by the stories of the strange folk. Shine has pursued serious studies in writing on his themes. In fact, listening to Madeline explain herself and her research, there are echoes of Shine’s career. And, it emerges that there has been an academic investigating these themes, responsible for the bunker, leaving a lot of records of his research. In the flashbacks and videos, he is played by veteran Irish actor, Lynch.
Mina finds two others in the bunker. The young man, Daniel (Finnegan) is the one struggling in the opening scenes and a young woman, Ciara (Campbell), who has been separated from her husband who keeps pounding on the door of the locked bunker. The four are trapped in the forest, although they can forage in the forest and watch television programs in the bunker.
And, The Watchers themselves are eerie characters, sometimes glimpsed, skeletal, but frequently heard, especially when huge flocks of black birds fly overhead and swoop. And the drama as the audience sharing the mystery, the quest, the hopes for escape, with Mina.
M Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs, The Village) is the producer while the writer-director is his daughter, Ishana Night Shyamalan. She is certainly following her father’s lead with atmosphere, tone, mystery, suspense, and twists in final explanations.
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