New horror movie The Watchers was inspired by one of the best supernatural thrillers and a very divisive 2009 horror

Ishana Night Shyamalan’s debut horror film The Watchers (called The Watched in the UK) is almost here. In the run-up to release, we sat down with the first-time director to chat about the inspirations behind the movie. 

It turns out that she, unsurprisingly, is a bit horror fan, and drew on a lot of suspenseful movies when creating her own.

The Watchers is based on the book by A.M. Shine, and follows protagonist Mina (Dakota Fanning) as she becomes stranded in the Irish woodland. This is no ordinary forest, though, as it contains mysterious creatures that like to observe the humans stranded there. If they try to escape, or don’t follow the rules, that quiet observation quickly turns to viciously hunting people down. 

A lot of the movies that inspired Shyamalan contain elements of folk horror – or, at the very least – a creepy forest. “I was inspired by The Witch, the textures and the essence of it,” the director, who also penned the script for The Watchers, says. Robert Eggers’ 2015 debut stars Anya Taylor-Joy as a girl living in the 1630s, who encounters evil forces in the woods outside her family farm. 

It’s not the only acclaimed horror film Shyamalan looked to. “It’s not kind of in the same genre but we looked at Antichrist a lot as a reference for what the forest might feel like,” she continues, referring to Lars von Trier’s 2009 movie starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. 

“Those movies really all have a sense of nature being a supernatural force. I was really looking into ‘How do I depict that?'”

There’s not long to wait to see exactly how Shyamalan has depicted it. The Watchers opens in cinemas on 7 June. 

For more, check out our guide to all of the upcoming horror movies on the way and our list of the best horror movies of all time.