As an artist, it’s no easy task to define oneself, to showcase a perspective and style that differentiates you from others. And it’s always that “other” that looms large, impacting your and everyone else’s perceptions of you. This is certainly the case for Mina (Dakota Fanning), a young, directionless artist whose car breaks down in the ancient woods of Ireland where she finds herself lost, in more ways than one, in , based on the novel by A.
M. Shine. The film marks the feature debut of 24-year-old , daughter of cinematic storyteller, .
The younger Shyamalan cut her teeth as a producer and director on her father’s the Apple+ series , and as second-unit director on M. Night’s beach horror feature, (2021). With , Ishana Shyamalan sets out to define herself as her own artist, while her father’s shadow, the one that audiences and studios created, looms large, both in terms of influence and the audience biases and expectations that have both helped and hindered his career.
This is the story of two women, one a fictional character in a folklore-steeped horror film, and the other the writer and director of that film, finding their way out of the woods. The way we are watched influences our behavior. Even when we’re told “just to act natural,” there is an element of performance.
This is something Mina quickly finds out, despite her initial resistance, when she is ushered into The Coop by Madeline (Olwen Fouere), where she meets two other captives, the naively op.
