it could have been a good movie but it wasn't

Rating: 4/10 (18 September 2002)

MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD *** It had everything in it for a good fright: The family in the isolated house, the bad aliens outside wanting to get in, the family hides in the dark cellar, so that I thought, finally, it will get scary. But it didn't. I mean, I wanted to get scared, I wanted to have that feeling of claustrophobia and helplessness, but I just sat there in the cinema and thought, "well, in THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD they did it much better". And when they discovered that they forgot to take the boy's medicine with them, I thought "don't I know that from PANIC ROOM?". I mean, I've seen other Shayamalan-films (SIXTH SENSE which was good, and UNBREAKABLE, which was awful), so I knew this wouldn't be an action flick, but this one never got any tension. And in the end, the aliens just left. Just like that.
Basically it's a film about someone who lost his wife, lost his faith because of that, and got it back. So why did Shayamalan put the aliens in it?
Thankfully I watched it on a matinee, so it wasn't such a total waste of money.