this was horrible

Rating: 2/10 (16 June 2008)

I first must start out by saying I love M. Night Shyamalan's work. I was blown away by the "Sixth Sense" and even "Signs" was a nail biter. His movies are suspenseful but not distasteful. The gore has never been a piece of the story. He is one of the best storyteller's in the modern day but this movie fails on many levels.
The opening scene captures our attention immediately. From there, it goes downhill.
The storyline is lame..plants? Come on! It's got so many loopholes in it that it's hard to follow.
The plants attack crowds that grow smaller and smaller as the story progresses, yet in every scene of attack , there is always someone that doesn't freeze. Even when they begin to realize it's the foliage, they trek onward through fields and tall grass-why not stay on the road? Makes no sense.
The acting is even harder to grasp. Poor Mark Walberg...LOVED him in "The Departed", this is simply not his genre. He's too much of a tough guy and you just cant relate to his teacherly persona. His wife-the doe-eyed lame actress just simply missed the boat. John Leguziamo's character was an unnecessary waste of film and just added to the confusion. And poor Betty Buckley-the deranged loner who takes them into her home. I felt like it was something out of Stephen King's "Misery"-gone-bad.
The problem is, as good as the premise may be for a story of revenge-driven plants, you just cant relate to the characters or follow the story. There is no connection.
The repetitive suicides at first are too graphic and not necessary ..it's almost as if that's all he had to work with so he continued to come up with as many different ways to kill oneself as he could to keep the story moving.
The ending left me with confusion and emptiness with no resolve.
And in the end, the result is a poorly directed, poorly acted film that will not go down in the history books as a hit of our time.
I would not recommend this movie. Save your money and rent it on DVD when you have nothing else to do.