YMMV / The Watcher in the Woods

• Adaptation Displacement:
  • The book the film was based on was originally titled A Watcher in the Woods. When the film was released, it was retitled The Watcher in the Woods. The film has since supplanted the book, which is out of print.
  • The book takes place in America while the film is in England instead.
  • In the book, the Watcher communicates via television and radio waves, as well as through mirrors. Its calling card is an X shape, rather than a triangle.
  • Probably most crucially, in the book Karen is not lost in a ritual. The gateway to the Watcher's world is through a hollow tree in which Karen happened to be hiding when the gate opened. The gate opens every fifty years regardless of circumstances, and in the climax of the book, the Watcher allows the dying Mrs. Aylwood to use the gate to reunite with Karen in the Watcher's dimension. The Watcher states that fifty years of Earth time is only a day to her, and that she will wait one more "day" to return home.
• Cult Classic: While never broadcast regularly since its original release, recently it gets marketed for sale in stores every year during the Halloween season.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Bette Davis plays a mother at the end of her life, anguished over her lost daughter. Five years after this movie came out, Davis's real-life daughter B.D. wrote a tell-all book alleging her mother emotionally abused her, after which the two were estranged until Davis died in 1989.
• Nightmare Fuel: Has its own page here.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: In spite of it—or rather because it was released under the Disney label—it has genuinely frightening moments such as surreal supernatural elements, consistent instances of child endangerment, and a tense atmosphere throughout. It was such a departure from the typical Disney fare that the original trailer contains a warning that it was not a typical family-friendly fairy tale.

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