This summer, cinemagoers will witness a father-daughter showdown at the box office. Reigning Lord Supreme of psychological mysteries and twisty ghost stories, M. Night Shyamalan, is releasing Trap, a thriller about a serial killer who brings his tween daughter to an Eras-style concert, only to realise the police have targeted him at the venue.

Starring Josh Hartnett, Trap is coming in August – but audiences will get another dose of Shyamalan twists and thrills this month, thanks to the directorial feature debut of M. Night’s 23-year-old-daughter, Ishana Night Shyamalan.

After working with her father as second unit director on Old and Knock At The Cabin, as well as being on the writing and directing team of the TV show Servant, Ishana is taking her place in the director’s chair for The Watched (released under The Watchers in foreign markets). Based on the novel by AM Shine, the supernatural thriller was shot in Ireland.

Dakota Fanning stars as artist Mina, who gets stranded in a large, lush and seemingly inescapable forest in the wilds of Connemara. When mysterious creatures seem to be stalking her, she finds shelter with three strangers (Olwen Fouéré, Oliver Finnegan and Georgina Campbell), who need to decide what to do – and whether they can trust each other.

Growing up with the director of The Sixth Sense as her dad, Ishana Night Shyamalan says she was always creative and interested in film, but wasn’t always sure she wanted to direct.

“I think my dad would have a different version of the story,” she reflects, “where he could have said he always knew throughout my childhood. I’m like, ‘No, you didn’t!’ I was moving through many different art forms as I was growing up. I was really interested in film, photography and painting, and I was dancer for a while.

“So it always felt like my soul most activated when I was creative. Then when it came time for me to get serious about what I wanted to study, I honed in on film, because it felt like the thing I could do where I didn’t have to lose any of those passions.”

Ishana Night Shyamalan directing The Watched

Ishana studied film at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, but of course, so much of her love of film came from watching her father on set. Never wanting to be separated from his family for too long while shooting, M. Night Shyamalan would often bring Ishana onto sets while she was young. As he shoots most of his films in Philadelphia with the same crew, they became Ishana’s extended family.

“These people kind of raised us and were our families,” she says. “As a kid, I felt very enamoured by what my father did. It felt magical, what he was making and how he was making it. All of those memories played into my love for the process.”

As most of M. Night Shyamalan’s films are somewhat dark, spooky and unnerving, he was careful about not showing them to his children too young. He started by allowing Ishana watch Lady In The Water at age eight, then letting her watch one of his films on her birthday as she got older.

“It’s wonderful, getting to see them,” she says. “He doesn’t really talk about his movies in the past to us that much. So I was going in as sort of a blind viewer. All my experiences in watching his movies have been completely moving and beautiful. I’m always left in awe just how wonderful an artist he is after I see anything he makes.”

Listing Spielberg, Miyazaki, Hitchcock and Wong Kar-wai as other influences, Ishana was excited to bring suspense and lush visuals to The Watched, and to use the Irish landscape to create a gothic, folkloric quality. Ishana hadn’t been to Ireland before scouting locations, and said she read extensively about Irish folklore in order to get a sense for the superstitions and stories embedded in Irish culture.

But the director wanted an American actress to play the lead, casting Dakota Fanning as Mia, who acts as the audience’s introduction to the wild and unknown landscape. Fanning, who grew up on screen in films I Am Sam and Uptown Girls, and is currently experiencing a resurgence with the Netflix show Ripley, here plays the artist who is on the run from some personal demons in Ireland, before encountering the mysterious forces in the woods.

“She was very much the person that came to mind as I was reading the screenplay, and I’m so lucky to have gotten her to do this movie,” gushes Ishana. “It’s so cool to me. In terms of what she represents for our generation, it’s such a power. She has a personality that just sticks with you and kind of resonates in an interesting way – she can tap into something that feels very universal and archetypal.”

Dakota Fanning in The Watched

In contrast to Fanning’s every woman quality, The Watched also features Olwen Fouéré, the acclaimed actress and theatre performer who always exudes the powerful, ethereal, otherworldly quality of a banshee queen. Fouéré plays one of the strangers that Mia meets, who seemingly also fears the mysteries of the woods, though Mia has to decide who she can trust.

Ishana was delighted to work with Fouéré, who also recently appeared in the horror films Sunrise and Tarot.

“She’s a totally captivating, otherworldly human being, and so kind and wonderful to work with, she’s unbelievable,” says Ishana. “She’s epic and wonderful.”

I imagine that Fouéré’s artistic process involves swooping into set on a cloud of wisdom accompanied by owl familiars, which the director will neither confirm nor deny. But she does say she finds the process of working with different actors and supporting their individual processes deeply rewarding. While she says she learned a lot from watching her father work with actors and be a leader on set, she’s also carving out her own style of leadership.

“My dad is a very precise man,” says Ishana. “We can both share that kind control freak nature, where he’s very bold, and very proud to have thought through every last detail. I really respect and love those techniques that he has, and the sort of sacredness of those. I’ve really tried to take that into my process as well and be classical in my approach. But I think there are differences, even just in me being a woman and him being a man.

“There’s just a different kind of vibe I have in how I communicate with people and run my set. It’s been a really wonderful journey to discover how I can make that experience of being a director feel very aligned with my specific way of talking and thinking, so that we slightly differ in that way. That’s quite a cool difference we have.”

Managing to shoot through some Covid restrictions and the SAG strike – Dakota Fanning was at one point taken off set and bundled into a taxi for Dublin Airport before a strike exemption came through – The Watched was shot in Dublin, Wicklow and Galway, and Ishana says she loved her time here.

“I just honestly had the best time,” she enthuses. “It was the summer when we were there, so we would wrap up together and still have three or four hours of sunlight left, which was so nice. I got to explore Dublin and hang around Galway – I got to do a lot of shopping. I went to Brown Thomas a lot! It was just beautiful, and one of the best elements was that we got to Galway as well, which is such a cool place to be.”

• The Watched is in cinemas now.