Overall a pretty poor movie. Interesting concept, poorly executed.

Rating: Null/10 (28 November 2008)

Night Shyamalan struck gold with "The Sixth Sense" and perhaps because of its success he believes he has the Midas touch in film. But once again he clearly proves that he doesn't. To me the concept of this movie was interesting and unique, but Shyamalan is proving to be a rather poor script writer. The dialog often is silly, and there is no smooth flow to the whole movie.
The two main characters are Mark Wahlberg as Elliot Moore and Zooey Deschanel as his wife Alma Moore. They do fine, especially Whalberg, but Shyamalan didn't give them much to work with.
Suddenly something very strange happens, in New York's Central Park. Whole groups of people stop in their tracks, then one might walk backwards for a short distance, and then do something totally out of character to kill himself or herself. This is to portray their normal senses being short-circuited.
Through the news media panic starts to grip the east coast then eventually the nation and the rest of the world. Is it terrorist activity? Is it government testing gone awry? Prophetically, in the high school class that Elliot teaches he makes the point that sometimes bad things happen in nature for which there is no explanation. He used bees mysteriously dying as an example. Later a farmer used a different example, where a tobacco plant can sent out signals to a particular insect to help the plant protect itself. The implication throughout the movie is that plants all around us perceive a threat from groups of people and are sending out a trace chemical that causes our brains to be short-circuited.
Interesting concept, but a poorly executed movie.