PHOTO COURTESY WARNER BROS. PICTURES

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, particularly when the tree is in a haunted forest crawling with mysterious creatures.

Writer/director Ishana Night Shyamalan has studied at her famous father’s camera for some time, helming episodes of his series “Servent” and working as the second-unit director on the films “Old” and “Knock at the Cabin.” While it can be reductive to characterize a second-generation artist’s work as an extension of their parent’s, the younger Shyamalan seems happy to be part of the family business; her work is filled with hallmarks of her father’s style.

In the case of “The Watchers,” her directorial debut, that’s a good thing; she seems to have inherited a sense of suspense and mystery while discarding her father’s self-indulgence and affinity for polemic.

Mina (Dakota Fanning) is sleepwalking through life in the west of Ireland, working at a pet shop and drinking to forget an unresolved childhood trauma. When her boss asks her to deliver a rare bird to a zoo outside Galway, she finds her GPS leading her into a dense forest — where her phone and car promptly cease all function.

She packs up the parrot and sets off into the wilderness, finding an unconventional shelter: A tightly sealed bunker, with one wall functioning as a two-way mirror peering into the woods. The bunker contains a trio of survivors — Ciara (Georgina Campbell), Daniel (Oliver Finnegan) and Madeline (Olwen Fouéré) — who explain that unseen beasts watch them each night, killing anyone who ventures out after dark.

As Mina seeks to discover more about what these monsters are and why she’s unable to leave, “The Watchers” settles into a pleasant cycle of revelation and action; the quartet learns something, then inches closer toward freedom or calamity. The story might go on a bit too long — its climax arrives long before the movie actually ends, despite an inevitable last-reel twist — but most of the proceedings are compelling and atmospherically rich.

It’s a remarkably strong start for Shyamalan, who draws desperate, raw performances from her cast and maintains a pervasive sense of dread throughout. Given her father’s recent stumbles, I can easily say that she’s the more promising of the two; hopefully, she continues down this path.

My Rating: 7/10

“The Watchers” is now playing in theaters.