Straight-Up Scary!!

Rating: 9/10 (5 August 2002)

It wasn't a movie!!! It was a roller coaster ride. Everybody was flopping around and screaming, wanting to get out their seats even though they knew it was pure spooky fun.
No PG13 movie has had its audience spooked-out like this since "Independence Day", another alien flick. M. Night Shaylaman's thrill-ride has us jumping out of our seats to laughing our heart out to damping up our tissues. Everything except finishing popcorn.
This is a pure favorite of the summer that I would recommend a whole family to see. Yes, I know it's for teens and above, but deep down in the film's ghostly heart, there is a gentle sensitiveness towards the young ones. While Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix start the struggling pain, Abigail Breslin and Rory Culkin, brother of you-know-who, ease it.
Every piece of dialogue is an essential character, while every fragment of cinematography is viewed as a piece of art, whether it is symmetry or a from an eagle's eye level.
With an ending that's unlike Shaylaman's tales, you'll cry out joy and go back to the box office.