Yahoo News The Watched's Ishana Night Shyamalan reveals unexpected Love Island influence
The Watched couldn't be further from the villa, and yet the new suspense thriller has an unexpected Love Island influence.
The new movie – titled The Watchers in the US – sees artist Mina (Dakota Fanning) stranded in the Irish forest, before she finds shelter with three strangers in the coop, where they are watched by mysterious creatures each night.
In the coop, there's not much to do, but Mina discovers a tape of reality show Lair of Love to wile away the long nights.
Talking to Digital Spy, writer/director Ishana Night Shyamalan revealed that the fictional show was inspired by Love Island, which she was watching as she wrote the script. "It just felt like there was an uncanny moment for me," she recalled.
"I felt how much this experience of what I was doing of voyeuristically watching through a box every single day of my life and being so invested in these characters was so related to what was happening to our four characters in the coop.
"So it felt like both a way to ground the experience and make it feel very alive and very modern, while commenting on the high concept of the movie and the high eeriness of the film."
While she has directed episodes of Servant, as well as serving as second-unit director on Old and Knock at the Cabin, The Watched marked Shyamalan's feature directorial debut.
For her debut, she chose to adapt A.M. Shine's book The Watchers for the screen, which she described as a "process of preservation".
"I feel like myself as someone who loves reading and loves watching movies, that kind of discourse of like, 'Did you do the book justice?' was something I felt very aware of from the beginning," she explained.
"I also think A.M. Shine, the author, is just such an artist in his own right, I wanted to honour that. So it was very much just about, like, building out sequences or certain elements, while maintaining all the structure and ideas that I felt were most important in the book."
The Watched will be released in UK cinemas on June 7.
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