Los Angeles: Indian-origin Hollywood filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan has talked about his daughter, Ishana Night Shyamalan, who is making her feature directorial debut with ‘The Watchers’ and said that she has a fantasy bent in her interests.
M. Night Shyamalan, who serves as a producer in the upcoming film, said: “Ishana — who wrote and directed several episodes of ‘Servant’ — has a fantasy bent in her interests. ‘The Watchers’ is an amazing book for her to adapt.”
“She read it, fell in love, and wanted to both write and direct it. It was a very organic way that it came about. We said, ‘It’s from an Irish author and based on Irish folklore — it would be a beautiful genre movie, and we could shoot it in Ireland.’ And we did,” he said.
The film follows Mina, a 28-year-old artiste, who gets stranded in an untouched forest in western Ireland. She unknowingly takes shelter alongside three strangers who are watched by mysterious creatures each night.
Talking about the genesis of the story and what drew her to it, Ishana said: “When I was deciding what my first feature should be, I looked at lots of different sources for inspiration; I really wanted to play with combining fantasy and thriller elements. A.M. Shine’s book was presented to me, and I started to read… by page 70, I was like, ‘I have to make this movie’.”
Based on the novel by A.M. Shine, Ishana described it as “a wonderful book, kind of structured like a movie… it’s so visual.” She added, “It begs you to think about how these worlds and characters look. It felt like an unending pool of inspiration to draw from—that’s the dream as both a writer and director. Some scenes in the movie are exactly the way I imagined them the first time I read the book.”
Delving further into her influences, Ishana said, “I knew from the start that this film was going to be a thriller/horror—it’s not only the vibe of the book but also the genre I enjoy the most. There was this darkness we wanted to embed in it. I was very inspired by Lars von Trier’s ‘Antichrist’—that witchy, dark, textural tone connected to nature felt right for this.”
The film is based on the novel by A.M. Shine, and Ishana called it “a wonderful book, kind of structured like a movie… it’s so visual.”
“It begs you to think about how these worlds and characters look. It felt like an unending pool of inspiration to draw from — that’s the dream as both a writer and director. In my writing of the script, it was very much about remembering how I felt the first time that I read the book and what those visuals were. And literally, some scenes that are in the movie are exactly the way that I imagined them the first time that I read the book,” she added.
Delving further into her influences to direct, Ishana said: “I knew upon entry into this film that it was going to be a thriller/horror — it’s not only the feeling and vibe of the book, but it’s also the genre I enjoy the most.”
“There was this darkness that we wanted to be embedded into it. I was very inspired by Lars van Trier’s ‘Antichrist’, that witchy, dark, textural kind of tone and feeling — and it’s very connected to nature. That felt the right approach to this.”
She shared that as soon as she began working on it, there was so much joy and light in the process that it ended up becoming much more tonally vibrant than she ever could have imagined.
“It’s very rich and full of life in the way it looks and in the characters. All of that emerged with the group that came together,” she concluded.
Starring Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouere, and Oliver Finnegan, ‘The Watchers’ is set to open in cinemas in India on June 14. It will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.
–IANS
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