Certainly not what I expected

Rating: 3/10 (17 June 2008)

A deadly killer rises up out of nowhere, indiscriminately taking victims, shattering families and lives, and crippling the northeastern United States in a matter of hours. It has the power to cause even the most strong-willed of people to fall under its power, rendering lethal wounds unto themselves, decimating the population. New York, the city that never sleeps, falls silent. All that is heard is the sound of the rustling wind. It's an interesting premise, one that fits M. Night Shyamalan's thriller genre: take an everyday occurrence, something we take for granted, and make it the most terrifying thing imaginable. Make it a story of survival, of beating the odds, of the everyday man in a battle against nature itself. A story of human love triumphing over human nature, and of the will to live triumphing over the will to destroy life.
If only that had been the case.
Rather than taking that interesting premise and developing it into realizing its potential, Shyamalan's latest piece is instead a horror of poor writing, poor acting, and poor execution. Not even a promising cast, led by the usually watchable Mark Wahlberg, could save this train wreck of a film. Instead, the viewer is subjected to 91 minutes of watching Wahlberg and company wander aimlessly with looks of chronic constipation, sometimes running from their unseen enemy, sometimes hiding like small children playing a game of hide and seek. Just as laughably, too.
Wahlberg's character, Elliott, is a high-school science teacher who always sounds like he's talking to hyperactive five-year-olds. He is married to Alma, played by the normally enchanting Zooey Deschanel, but who in this film appears to be awakening from a drug-induced coma. Perpetually wide-eyed, you have to wonder if she really comprehends any of what's going on or if she's just following a game of cat-and-mouse. For two award-winning actors, these performances were very sub-par, quite on the same level as Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman in the recent Star Wars movies, if not lower.
Elliott and Alma are joined by Elliott's best friend Julian (John Leguizamo) and his young daughter Jess as they try to escape the affected areas of attack. Julian eventually leaves them to find his wife, leaving Jess, who has the role of the eerily quiet, affected child in this volume of Shyamalan's work. (Reference: Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense, and Abigail Breslin in Signs for comparisons.) They run through the countryside, trying to escape the wind, and although they're caught in it, they emerge unharmed.
That's another big issue I have with the film: believability. A deadly neurotoxin travels through the air, yet somehow Elliot and his crew, though being caught in it, are never affected. The neurotoxin is apparently unable to travel through cracks or holes, as evidenced by the numerous door slams and window locks in the movie. So many times, while watching this movie, I was reminded of the fright films that used to be shown in schools in the 1950s and 1960s, during the Cold War, which led hundreds of thousands of children to believe that hiding under a desk would protect you from a nuclear bomb. Were a neurotoxin to truly be released into the air, such as sarin or mustard gas, no amount of door slamming or towel-stuffing would be able to save you; even a fraction of a percentage of the toxin could travel through, and that would be enough to kill. That is a fact. What's sad is that this reality was shoved aside, asking the viewer to ignore all logic in favor of the story.
There is just so much wrong with this movie it's almost embarrassing. From the bad script, to the horrid acting, to the sluggish pace of the action, this certainly has to be Shyamalan's most forgettable film. Let's hope he's able to pick up the pieces from this disaster and make a comeback in his next movie.