Typical Shyamalan slow, creepy, realistic, fun, excellent!

Rating: 9/10 (6 August 2002)

This movie is slow, and yet it starts up with an event in the first minute. It's scary, and yet you're (almost) never really terrified. Advancing with Welles-like realism, it carefully chronicles world-changing strange events from the perspective of just one family in a small town, seemingly cut off from the rest of the world. At moments simultaneously reminiscent of both War of the Worlds and Night of the Living Dead, there's a mildly claustrophobic feeling to the entire film. Sometimes it's so suffocating, you are desperate for the sparsely placed moments of comedy. One could argue that it's so weighty, that it causes Mr. Shyamalan's role IN the movie to seem self-indulgent. Not as much as when Spike Lee does it, but bad enough to be a distraction. I probably wouldn't complain if the writer/director/producer AND actor had a better sense of how to use animals in his script. Without spoiling anything, I will say that the film does not disappoint the patient viewer. You will unravel both the story of the Hess family and their mysterious crop circles, even if one on top of the other. All that you patiently worked to figure out will come around for you in a very satisfying way.