Same old Shyamalan formula flick

Rating: 4/10 (5 August 2002)

Is it me or does Shyamalan seem to be making the same movie over and over? Were The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, or Signs really all that different? Essentially strange things happen, clues are dropped along the way, and finally the "money shot", for lack of a better term, where everything (sort of) ties together. The problem is that each time out his plot twists become less and less convincing. Even the endlessly recycled score doesn't inspire me to care too much.
And I didn't know what this movie was really about. Was it about mysterious crop circles? alien invasions? renewal of faith? I suppose the latter most of all, but if so, why have all this trite alien sci-fi stuff or if not why the constant new age pseudo-intellectual jabber? One could have easily replaced all of that with a completely different set of events and it wouldn't have mattered in the slightest to the plot.
The only thing I really learned from this film was to avoid future Shyamalan thrillers because I've already seen them in the past. How's that for a mind-bender? That might make a good movie...oh never mind.