Disney must have been thinking of creating a family-friendly horror/thriller when it produced The Watcher in the Woods by John Hough and Vincent McEvee. It shows in the story, characters, setting, and dialogue.
We see the familiar storyline of a family moving into a new house which is away from the world and next to the woods. The parents Paul Curtis (David McCallum) and Helen (Carroll Baker) don’t see anything unusual in the house while their teen daughter Jan (Lynn-Holly Johnson) starts noticing strange happenings inside the house as well as in the woods nearby. Before long, the younger daughter in the family Ellie (Kyle Richards) also starts acting strange and the house’s aging owner Mrs. Aylwood (Bette Davis) is made to reveal the 30 year old story of what happened to her daughter at an abandoned chapel in the woods.
The Watcher in the Woods is more thriller than horror. The usual scare shots – creepy woods, visuals of a dead person, cats jumping at you out of nowhere, and some creepy aging people surprising the young lady who is curious to know what happened to Mrs. Aylwood’s daughter. The horror element is moderate and quite tame by today’s standards.
The cast is good though David McCallum’s role in the movie is just filler – the dad in the family who really has no part in any of the significant action or even dialogue. Back then Disney’s movies were supposed to present traditional families, hence McCallum’s role. Being a young adult film, Jan is the story’s protagonist and claims most of the screen time. The movie’s best part perhaps is the backstory – shown in flashbacks – where the current young characters have their parallels in the past and now must reunite to repeat a ritual in the chapel to try save the soul they seemingly lost by a mistake.
The Watcher in the Woods is a nice and clean horror/thriller for a family show.
