What a shame! And so much promise, too!

Rating: Null/10 (14 August 2002)

Picture it - you're driving along at a pretty nice clip. It's a route you've traveled before and it won't be long before you get to where you're going. Suddenly, you round a bend and you have to hit the brakes because of a sudden traffic jam. You then inch along; it takes you 20 minutes to drive one mile. Frustrated, you exclaim to yourself, "There better be a dead body at the end of all of this to explain this mess!"
After more tedious moments, you pull forward and the few cars in front of you then drive on at their former brisk pace. You finally see that the only thing that held you up for so long was someone getting a traffic ticket. BIG FREAKIN' DEAL!
To all who would like to see SIGNS, apply this scenario to watching the movie. For the first hour, the film glides along at a pretty nice clip. The suspense turned up a few degrees by M. Night Shyamalan, there is a sufficient number of heart-in-your-throat moments that ALMOST put THE SIXTH SENSE to shame. Wow, M. Night really outdid himself with this one.
Then, it all stops. The suspense peters out and the film begins to drag. What gives?
Before you know it, the film is over, its ending reminiscent of other films where the writer (in this case, M. Night Shyamalan) wrote himself into a corner and couldn't find a satisfactory way out. It seemed as if his only option was to wrap the story up as quickly as possible with unexplained (or under explained) developments (the aliens' sudden departure) and tidy resolutions to profound storylines (questions of faith and religion by Graham Hess - the protagonist played by Mel Gibson).
The payoff we waited an hour and a half for doesn't come. Out of courtesy to those who haven't seen the film, I won't describe the final big scene. Suffice it to say that what should have been quite effective ends being quite anti-climactic. Once it's over, you end up shrugging your shoulders and saying, "Now what?" (Even the way the final big scene is played out comes across as formulaic and hackneyed.)
All that suspense, all that great storytelling laid to waste by a lazy, cop-out ending. I'd like to give M. Night the benefit of the doubt and think that maybe I missed something. I doubt it, though.
This film ranks alongside UNBREAKABLE as another disappointing creation from M. Night. With two disappointments like these two under his belt, it's beginning to look as if THE SIXTH SENSE and its superb quality were just flukes. Let's hope his follow-up film lives up to the standards he set for himself with THE SIXTH SENSE.
On a scale of 1 to 10, give this one a 4.