The Watcher in the Woods

The Watcher in Woods

June 17, 2014

(This is from an alternate ending of the movie; here the unseen watcher is seen as an alien like creature.)

 

            Disney’s The Watcher in the Woods was released in 1980 and was adapted from the young adult novel written by Florence Engel Randall. Randall combines the elements of science fiction, fantasy, and suspense that takes the reader into the realms of the natural world and the other world. The book gives the reader a look into another world through a door in a tree. The father and daughter takes the journey into the world of the watcher that shows the life of the watcher and why Karen and the watcher traded places. The movie leaves out the storyline involving the father and daughter entering the watcher’s world.  In an alternate ending we only see a glimpse of what the watcher looks like, in the form of an alien like creature, and what the other world, of the watcher, looks like. The book becomes muddled in fantasy and sci-fi where it becomes confusing for the reader. The movie is more audience friendly because it gives more of a supernatural and suspense feel that gives a better storyline and leaves out the confusing fantasy aspect of the novel. The audience hears and sees the suspense while being kept involved in a great storyline without having to decipher which world they are in. The director of the movie weaves elements of suspense that involves the use of music, the unseen watcher, the wind, the woods, and flashes of light that gives an eerie feeling of what is really out in the woods.

            The back-story of the movie involves the disappearance of a teenage girl named Karen. Karen, the daughter of Mrs. Aylwood, one night was in the process of being inducted into a secret club, run by her friends, when she mysteriously disappears and trades places with the watcher. The movie is scary but not gory, as result it is family friendly while still being suspense filled because of the elements that the director uses. Some of the supernatural and spookier elements of the movie that keeps great flow involves, not only the unseen watcher in the woods, but also the uses of séances, sudden bursts of wind, humming from unseen forces, and the younger daughter talks in an unnatural trances. When someone thinks of a séance they think of communicating with the dead and brings an eerie mood to that moment. The unseen dead could, like the unseen watcher, attack any moment. One cannot defend themselves against an unseen force. The unseen watcher is a suspense tool because the audience never knows where it is, if and when it could attack, or what it is. The disappearance of Karen and the appearance of the watcher were neatly resolved using the supernatural, natural, and a touch of suspense at the end of the movie. The director had Karen’s friends repeat the séance while a solar eclipse was occurring. During this eclipse the watcher possessed the body of the younger daughter, Ellie, and told the friends that Karen would return if they repeated the same ritual that caused the watcher to enter the natural world and Karen to enter the watcher’s world. The suspense filled ending gave a better understanding of what the novel essence was all about.