Signs of intellectual weakness.

Rating: 2/10 (8 August 2002)

Researchers who have spent decades studying the worldwide, mysterious phenomena of crop circles and land glyphs that are sometimes larger than several football fields side by side and yet form in minutes have postulated that the event is also ancient. Evidences of this global mystery are age old.
The attempt in this film of Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan to suddenly tie the historic phenomena to a wafer-thin, comic book contrivance of hostile alien incursion certainly does not wash. At the level of the story we find in its text constant broadcast media reports of the aliens with no absolutely detail on their method or behavior. We see items such as the hero confronting an alien locked in a pantry, the alien apparently weak as a kitten then later escapes, again giving no detail as to his escape but then having gained supernatural power. Our hero cuts off some of its fingers afterward not seeking help from the police, nor mentioning the traumatic confrontation to no one. He just goes about expressing fright. In the subtext we find the hero, a minister, giving up his life commitment to God and humanity, in childish fashion, somehow forgetting all of his theological studies and comprehension of the complex universal workings of a supreme intelligence after the untimely death of his wife. Some minister. The entire mishmash of a production is given a bit of value only by the extraordinary performance of Mel Gibson who must have suffered working with the terrible script.
If you want to see a truly scary, brilliantly written and produced film about some comic book extraterrestrial alien threat check out THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, the Howard Hawks 1951 classic usually credited to Christian Nyby. Any number of extraterrestrial threat films of this genre with stories going back as far as a century ago with H. G. Wells' WAR OF THE WORLDS is superior. We expected much more from this writer director after his solid showing in THE SIXTH SENSE.