Shyamalan is a hack but great at convincing folks he's not

Rating: 1/10 (2 August 2002)

After the truly awful "Unbreakable" retractively ruined "The Sixth Sense" for me, I was curious what Shyamalan had in store for the third installment of his self-proclaimed "comic book trilogy". This supposed "Hitchcock of the new millenium" got lucky with his first (early on in its success, he admitted that the ending of "Sixth" came to him in a flash of inspiration late in the revision process- he has not mentioned that lately) and has failed at his two subsequent efforts, despite brilliant camerawork by Fujimoto. His writing is trite- get ready for the crowd to laugh out loud at some of Culkin's lines, poor kid- and his "trademark (?) surprise ending" in this film?.. Well, I'm not sure what it's supposed to be....is it that we're watching an alien movie, which we know from the previews, or is it the laughable way the aliens make their exit? I wouldn't let my dog pee on this comic book. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE Hollywood superstars, stop encouraging this man. I don't even want to know what he did for Gibson to dub him a "genius".