Beware: major pitfall ahead!

Rating: 6/10 (9 September 2006)

Minor spoilers below. But you probably read through 20 spoiler comments anyway to reach this one.
It's surprising that the highest rated comments on this movie are all "hated it" comments. Or maybe it's not that surprising after all. As you can see, all these comments tell the same thing (which makes me wonder why even the 10th one is still rated 'useful'). The conclusion: "this is a very bad sci-fi movie about incredibly stupid aliens (and a stupid dog too)."
They're right, as a sci-fi movie this is not quite it. The plot holes are bigger than the crop circles. However, all these people are somehow missing the point, but they can't be blamed. Why is this? Well, the problem with this movie is that from the time it was announced on, people thought it would be a sci-fi movie revolving about an alien invasion and nothing else. It isn't, but this is never obvious enough.
Some reviewers get it right: this movie is actually about belief. The alien story is just a vehicle. This is why everyone expecting an alien movie will be heavily disappointed at the end. It's a typical Shyamalan film in that it tries to set you on the wrong track, but it's atypical in that it's poorly executed.
I think Shyamalan's biggest mistake was to eventually resort to showing more of the aliens than just some shadows and indirect hints, or even making it so obvious that there were aliens after all, and what their intentions were. There's no better way to ruin a whole suspenseful build-up based on concealment, than to show the evil in all its CGI glory and having a TV set telling what its plans are. The fact that at some point in this movie an alien is shown in its entirety, has helped to feed the misunderstanding that it's just a bad alien movie. For the conclusion of the story as it is, showing the alien was almost inevitable. But the same kind of story could have been told without having to lift the veil of mystery around the aliens. All the gigantic plot holes that so many people have fallen into, would have been avoided if we never knew what -- and who -- exactly was behind those crop circles. People could have made up their own explanations, and as everyone knows, in the absence of ready-made (CGI) answers, people come up with much more captivating ideas on their own. People would have left the theater, still wondering about the mysteries. But instead, we are spoon-fed with a pretty weak sci-fi story which at some point made me remember the movie "Independence Day". That's IMHO not a bad movie, but this one being associated with it, is.
My conclusion: the first part is really good. The build-up of suspense works well and there are some truly scary moments. But soon, the first holes in this build-up begin to appear, and eventually it all crumbles. The finale is embarrassing.
Considering Shyamalan's track record, it probably was intentional to make people believe they're watching an alien movie, and then shatter this belief and reveal the true identity of the movie. But the belief is never shattered because it _is_ an alien movie after all, and not a good one at that. All that remains, is disbelief why it was such a bad alien movie, and the actual point of the story is forgotten. Compared to the rest of the movie, the parts about the actual story even seem (pun intended)... alien.