Not only is M. Night Shyamalan back with Trap, his daughter Ishana Night Shymalan will be making her feature debut. After the young director previously worked with her father as a second unit director on Old and Knock At The Cabin, along with being involved on Servant’s writing and directing team, she’s spreading her wings with the summer release of The Watchers. While it’s a horror movie, like another Shyamalan is famous for, Ishana Night Shyamalan spoke with CinemaBlend about what distinguishes her from The Sixth Sense filmmaker.
When I attended Warner Bros. “Summer Of Shyamalan” event at the Soho House in Los Angeles, California last week, I had a chance to chat with Ishana Night Shyamalan about her latest movie. Here’s what she had to say when I asked how her directorial debut will set her apart from her dad:
I think there will inevitably be a level of similarity just as we share our genetics and share our world. I hope when you see The Watchers, you can feel the difference in the essence [of the movie]… I think everything is kind of weird and satirical and I think its fantasy element too going deeper into that. But yeah, I can’t really conceptually say how much is different between us, but I think I put myself into it. So hopefully, you’ll feel the differences between us, and I’m excited for people to kind of make those distinctions themselves.
As the young filmmaker shared, perhaps she’s too close to the whole thing to share how she’ll distinguish herself to us. But she is very excited to hear what audiences will pick up on when they see both of the upcoming horror movies this summer. One particular element of making The Watchers that Shyamalan did speak to that sounds different than her father’s work is in regards to her love of fantasy. She shared that Hayao Miyazaki in particular is in her “bones.” We’ll have to see how that comes across in her directorial debut.
Just prior to my chat with Ishana Night Shyamalan, CinemaBlend attended a conversation between the father and daughter. M. Night shared this about what he’s noticed about Ishana’s distinctive style:
When I was working with all the writers in the writer’s room on Servant, each writer had different strengths and I remember telling the people in my office that Ishana has a really strong handle on structure – which in film format is the holy grail. That’s it. And, I remember working on my first TV show with the Duffer Brothers and I remember feeling the exact same thing with them going, ‘Wow, these guys, they just inherently understand structure, that’s where they come from. As writers, we can get lost and we can follow something and go to the right and then we’ve lost the kind of the vertical structure of the plot. We’re very different in how we approach writing. She’s kind of like Jackson Pollock. She throws all this stuff up and I’m like, whoa, whoa.
As M. Night Shymalan explained, he and Ishana have different ways they do things in regards to mapping out their story structure. He complimented his daughter by comparing her to the Stranger Things creators, the Duffer Brothers, but also likened her process to Jackson Pollock adding paint splats to a canvas. We’ll. of course, soon find out what Ishana has to offer on her own with The Watchers’ release.
The Watchers follows Dakota Fanning’s Mina as she gets stranded in a forest in Ireland, only to find herself trapped with three other people who claim they are being stalked by mysterious creatures whenever the sun goes down. The movie will hit theaters on June 7. M. Night Shyamalan’s movie, on the other hand, Trap, which just released a trailer this week, will follow her film when it comes out on August 9. You can check out more about what Warner Bros. has on the horizon with our blog on the studio’s CinemaCon panel.
