In direct line with her father’s work, Ishana Shyamalan delivers a thriller marked by terror, narrative twists and complicit effects in its debut Observed. Different snippets of the genre come together in this fable with an air of Celtic legend and media satire that takes place almost entirely in a forest, and that in effect gives the sensation of combining (at least) two films in one.
Mina (Dakota Fanning) is a lonely young artist who lives a camouflaged life in Ireland, where she pretends to be someone else when she goes out to meet men in pubs. A sister’s call to which she never answers and the advice to forget the past hint at a family conflict and an identity left behind. Everything changes with the arrival of a parrot that falls into her care, whom she takes for a walk on an excursion to the outskirts. The breakdown of the car in the middle of a forest does the rest, and she soon finds herself lost in that gloomy place.
Once you have crossed the magical threshold, Observed He quickly deploys his approach. The arrival of night leads the protagonist to take refuge in a square house where she is welcomed by the veteran Madeline (Olwen Fouéré) and the young Ciara (Georgina Campbell) and Daniel (Oliver Finnegan), who inform her of the rules. prevailing fantastics. Every evening they must lock themselves in that scenic cubicle and pose in front of a mirror through which a group of unknown “observers” contemplate them from the outside.
During the day, they have time to go for a walk through that forest wasteland with no chance of exit. This double fenced perimeter designates the plot overloaded with Observed: on the one hand, the domestic spectacle of reality show to which the characters undergo and which includes the behind-the-scenes presence of a professor (John Lynch); and on the other, the fantastic story, with the progressive unveiling of the beings voyeurs.
American horror has given excellent recent examples of its validity, which Shyamalan ignores with quotes to a bunker cinema that has already passed its quarter of an hour. Attractive in the first instance, the thematic axes of Observed they alternate erratically and unevenly, pulling at the strings until an ending that could have been a separate film and that comes too late for disenchanted observers on the other side.
To see “Watched”
USA, 2024. Screenplay and direction: Ishana Shyamalan. With: Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell and Olwen Fouéré. Duration: 102 minutes. Rating: Suitable for ages 13 and up. In theaters.
