What's "happening" to M. Night Shyamalan ?

Rating: 1/10 (17 June 2008)

Okay, let me start by saying that I'm a HUGE M. Night Shyamalan fan: I loved his early movies and especially "Unbreakable" which is (by far) one of my favorite movies.
BUT... even if all his movies have flaws and I can understand people not liking them, I just don't understand what's happening to him...
He still managed to make me want to SEE this movie because I thought the story would be gripping and fascinating but as with "Lady in the water", it seems M. Night Shyamalan has lost his magic touch.
The beginning is good, very good... I liked the fact that nobody knows what's happening, I liked all the mysteries, I liked the graphic deaths (there's much more blood than in his previous films)... I liked everything about it... I was so happy to finally get the feeling I had when I watched "the 6th sense"... THEN everything went wrong... from the dialogs (which are by far some of the stupidest dialogs I have ever heard... everybody was just laughing in the theater) to the story itself which can not have been written by an adult...I like when a movie appeals to our inner child but here... come on, the end is PATHETIC!
Nowadays a lot of movies only rely on CGI and stunt scenes, so they hide their lacks of stories behind huge effects... here there's no CGI, almost no stunt scenes so since there's no story, the movie is just empty... it's like passing a beautiful gate to take a road which leads nowhere.
The revelation of the mystery is made half way through by one of the supporting roles (so what's the point of watching the rest?), there are COUNTLESS sub-stories that are really boring (what's the point with the lady in the house?, what happens to the people in the other house? What about the little girl) and it ends just like that, leaving a feeling of huge disappointment.
As for the actors...what can I say.... it just seemed to me that they were not concerned and bored throughout the movie... they must say those lines and you never believe one word of what they say...there's absolutely no chemistry between them and you can not believe those two are married. I love both of the leading roles but I have to say they have never been that bad in a movie.
So this movie has a good beginning but that's about it... oh yes, there's another good point in the movie... it is short...
Please M. Night Shyamalan, go back to what you were doing, I'm missing you so much and even though I still trust your ability to make good movies, I still hope you'll react in a good way and make movies you used to.
So for me it's probably M. Night Shyamalan's worst film to date...and it hurts me to say that !