The Watchers by A.M. Shine
You don't want to be outside after sundown
It’s the kind of high-concept setup that seems tailor-made for a modern horror movie: a group of people are trapped in a glass-walled cabin in the middle of the woods where they are visited each night by a gang of murderous monsters who delight in observing them like they’re creatures in a zoo.
As attention grabbing as that vivid elevator pitch is (and yes, of course they made a film based on the book) there’s more to the story than that, for better and worse…
The novel begins with an intense scene featuring one of those trapped humans making a desperate, yet unsuccessful escape attempt, which immediately hooks you into wanting to know more of the story and explore more of this world.
But be careful what you wish for. If TV shows like Lost have taught us anything, it’s that sometimes it’s best if certain questions to go unanswered.
Lost isn’t necessarily a bad touchstone when discussing The Watchers, actually, although I feel From is a more relevant comparison. Indeed, those familiar with that show will note the similarities between how the trapped humans come to be in the predicament they find themselves.
In the case of The Watchers’ protagonist, Mina, she wanders into the woods (which shouldn’t actually exist seeing as how they don’t appear on any map) when her car inexplicably breaks down in the middle of nowhere with no hope of rescue. As the sun beings to set she becomes aware of something dangerous in the forest. In the nick of time, she comes upon a “coop” where other poor souls are readying to barricade themselves inside for the night as they prepare for the watchers to arrive…
The Watchers has some, occasionally, truly terrifying moments, but given the nature of the frantically unrelenting purgatory the characters find themselves in — they’re stuck, isolated, in the middle of the woods — it peddles more in a persisting sense of hopeless dread than outright horror. Although, to be fair, there are a handful of scary set pieces to be enjoyed.
And while there are stretches where it feels like the author is treading water for the sake of filling pages, the unexpected narrative structure makes up for it through the use of welcome time jumps and imaginative twists.
Patience is necessary not just for Mina and her fellow prisoners, but also for the reader.
The reward is worth it, however, as the author crafts some truly eloquent and evocative descriptions in a delightfully unrushed, lyrical, lilting Irish prose, which paint a vivid sense of the details of the world with breathtaking brevity.
While The Watchers left me wishing it leant a little more into the horror genre suggested by its concept, I still really enjoyed this book and have to admit to being surprised by it more than a couple of times.