sjarja

Dark! - too dark! What kind of environment is that supposed to be? You genuinely cannot see anything. I mean .. you had a greater visibility in the mist - from the movie "the Mist".

Suspense is nice at the beginning .. but the movie shifts from a very calm slow burner to almost a b-movie format.

What the movie establishes in its first half is not resolved in its second half. The "world" it is in ... makes no sense. No hospital looks as run down as that one - especially not when the chief doctor (or whatever he is) is portrait as so ambitious.

Furthermore - it GREATLY suffers from the "Star Trek" syndrome .. of showcasing an entire mental facility with 2 rooms , 2 patients and 2 employees. There is a threshold when things become just a little abstract. Its like Star Trek .. an entire planet is one small soundstage with 3 actors.

But is it worth watching?

Kind of. As i said - the first half is nice .. like one of the good episodes of X-Files. The conclusion is like .. well .. one of the rather poorer episodes of X-Files. It never reaches what i would call "movie quality" - because it cuts too many corners and does nothing with the characters.

All in all - i would say it is average .. but sadly not better.

So, this is the final act of the story? What a disappointment indeed.

Aside from what can only be described as utter chaos when it comes to storytelling, it is also just bad in terms of acting and characters.

There is massive overacting and underacting .. and oddly (despite statistically necessary) hardly any appropriate acting.

There is also a completely useless side plot in the refugee camp (that only makes a little sense when you suffered though all the previous parts)

All in all - this movie is bad. Poor, very poor storytelling. Bad characters and character development ... and an open ending for yet more parts - yay?

Ok, there is so much bad about it .. but here is some good, too.

Some designs are nice - look a bit copy/pasted from shows like Stargate Atlantis maybe (wraith ship or similar), some set designs (the practical ones) are fine - maybe a bit too much modelling foam but its OK.

All in all, this movie "might" actually be a guilty pleasure or "so bad its good".

I was not bored - and i would fully believe that - for the cast - it might have been a blast to do this. A very cheesy, 90s/2000s style low budget action movie ... in 2020.

Unless i do not understand the world building .. there seem to be a few plot holes. It is not too dramatic - just enough that it distracted me a fair bit.

I have to compare it to the one other changeling movie that is in my mind .. "hole in the ground". That movie was ... a good deal more shocking, more horrific. The aspect of a changeling was explored better there .. but also much more - lets say - faithful to the "lore/legends".

Hole in the ground was a horror movie - The Watchers is .. almost more a fairy tale. Both movies have a happy ending, but one is a lot more sinister than the other.

Another kind of similar movie would be "Significant other" - which is technically not about the classic changeling, but more an alien - also the movie is significantly more gory and not really meant to have huge twists.

Oddly - significant other lands the "twist" ending much more than The Watchers. - and a lot more effortlessly.

However - The Watchers was not a disappointment. It is suspenseful, the characters are not so dumb to be enraging/annoying .. and the creatures are kept in the dark for the most part to keep a sort of mystery about them. (except when changed)

As others have mentioned, The Watchers is - very predictable .. and i am sure, by the 60% mark, most people will have a good idea how it is going to end.

For me, a solid 6/10 for slightly above average.