Like father, like daughter: M. Night Shyamalan’s middle child directs first horror film

NEW YORK – Known for supernatural hits such as The Sixth Sense (1999) and Signs (2002), Indian-American film-maker M. Night Shyamalan raised his three daughters on a steady diet of horror films.

So, it is perhaps unsurprising that one of the 53-year-old’s children decided to follow in his footsteps and make a scary movie of her own.

Opening in Singapore cinemas on June 6, The Watchers is the feature film debut of 24-year-old director Ishana Night Shyamalan, who adapted the script from the 2021 Gothic horror novel of the same name by author A.M. Shine.

The movie stars American actress Dakota Fanning as Mina, a young woman who becomes lost in a strange Irish forest and finds shelter in a bunker with three strangers (played by Georgina Campbell, Oliver Finnegan and Olwen Fouere).

But she then learns they are being held captive by mysterious creatures who come to observe them every night through a one-way mirror.

At The Watchers’ recent premiere in New York City, the younger Shyamalan – who was accompanied to the event by the rest of her family, including her father, mother Bhavna, 51, and sisters Saleka, 27, and Shivani, 18 – admits it was not easy making the movie.

“It was an incredibly challenging process for me, being young and trying to embark on this,” she says.

“There’s so much fear in it, and it’s been so wonderful to confront that fear and try to move through it and learn things about myself.”

She had already picked up many of the tools of the trade from her father, though.

Shyamalan – who studied film and television at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts – worked as one of the writer-directors on Servant (2019 to 2023), the psychological horror series produced and co-directed by her father.

She also served as a second-unit director on his horror movies Knock At The Cabin (2023) and Old (2021).

But helming her own feature film meant developing a style of working that began to diverge from her father’s.

“I’ve observed his career my whole life and I’ve always admired how he respects the art form, but it was interesting for me to step into this role and figure it out.

“Certain things didn’t feel right to me and I just had to curate a process that was more suited to my personality.

“So it’s been interesting to both of us to feel those differences,” Shyamalan says.

But like her father, she leans into the psychological and metaphorical aspects of the horror genre.

“I think a horror film can be so many different things. To me, it’s the use of fear as a tool to address different things and talk about different emotions.”

And as a storyteller, Shyamalan believes in the power of suggestion and suspense.

“What I’ve learnt from the horror movies that I love is it’s really the expectation of seeing something that creates a scary environment.

“I really tried to play with that idea, so you are drawing out the unease and the fear of seeing something very scary for the majority of the movie.”

In a 2021 interview with The New York Times, M. Night Shyamalan said he had known early on that his middle child would become a film-maker, even though he never pushed her to do it.

This is because “we’d watch a movie and... she was able to discern what was exceptional about what we had watched”, he explained.

At the premiere on June 2, he was beaming with pride and tweeted the next day: “My heart was bursting last night. Ishana incandescent. The audience... had so much love for her, the cast and the film.”

In an earlier tweet about The Watchers, which he co-produced, he also acknowledged the part he had played.

“Whoever made this must’ve had a twisted upbringing,” he joked.