Better than Lady in the Water, but gives away twist too early...

Rating: 5/10 (1 September 2008)

M. Night is being lambasted about this film; I won't say this film doesn't have a ton of flaws (believe me, it does), but it's clear to me that he is on a tract to duplicate the successes of Alfred Hitchcock. It is obvious Hitchcock is a huge influence... nay, a source... for much of M. Night's experimental film-making.
Unfortunately, he's turning off a lot of people with this style of film-making.
Let's just get it out of the way now - the idea is unique but the screen writing is atrocious. This film needed a healthy dose of panic. If the film-makers had injected 1/10th of the panic-stricken dialog from the movie 'Cloverfield', this film could easily have been a frightening thriller.
Instead it just plods along delivering cheesy overly-dramatic lines that are seriously out-of-context.
The actors aren't panicked when they should naturally be, and often times it appears they are just standing around waiting for their fate rather than running off in the other direction, away from the terror that is coming after them.
I can see where M. Night was going with this, but I honestly think the studio should have called for a re-write. M. Night is great, but clearly he needed help on the dialog and character actions of this film.
Now let me get to the worst part - M. Night gave away the 'twist' almost 25% into the movie! From any other director I don't mind, but I've come to expect a 'surprise' from M. Night - kind of like, waiting for the jack-in-the-box to spring open, even though you know it's coming. Unfortunately the 'twist' was cited early on, which left me thinking 'ok, now what?' until the credits rolled.
I give M. Night a 5 out of 10, because it seemed like he genuinely tried to do something magical here, but just missed the mark. Next time, Mr. Shamalan, PLEASE accept the help of some gifted WGA member, even if you throw out most of their rewrites.