A disappointment, despite having potential

Rating: 2/10 (22 July 2008)

I liked the sixth sense. In fact, with that movie, Shyamalan created a whole new style of storytelling. However, after that I watched Signs, The Village & Lady In The Water, I noticed the the pattern of steady deterioration in his work.
At least the rest of them had good performances by the actors in the lead roles. Mark Wahlberg frankly surprised me by how bad his acting was - I think he only did a few minutes of decent acting in the beginning. But then, he probably stood out because he had the most screen time; others were equally terrible, if not worse. In this case, it seems as if it's the director's fault. I also wonder if the mistake was greater in casting. Surely when you do so many close ups of the lead, you'd want an actor who is better at facial expressions. I respect Mark Wahlberg as an actor, but this movie really did make it seem that he'd only be good for the more physical actor playing a bad-ass.
Onto the plot, I thought the main concept of the movie was pretty interesting, it wasn't something totally useless like Epic Movie, but something one could ponder about. But the execution was rather poor. For example, at the end when a scientist loudly claims on TV that this was nature acting back, it seemed too overtly out there & sounded comical. I'd rather go with the government idea, because that idea was portrayed a bit more subtly.
The opening scene turned out to be pretty good, and for a moment, I found myself thinking "Yes, Shyamalan has returned!" But while the movie continued, the story didn't unravel any further. Halfway through the movie, we are told that plants are behind this pandemic, and that was the only explanation we ever got. I was naturally disappointed, not to see 'The Shyamalan Twist'at the end(although the scene at the end where Elliot & Alma walk towards each other in the fields & remain unaffected may have been intended as the twist, but I failed to see it).
Nonetheless, there have been good movies where we never really get a full explanation of the plot, like the low-budget Canadian movie Cube. But they had more interesting characters. As for the characters in this movie, most of them seemed unrealistic. For example, the little feud between Elliot & Alma - were they not overreacting to Alma having dessert with Joey when supposedly working late? Or about the part about Elliot joking about a pharmacist? Another thing, the characters' reactions to the deaths surrounding seemed odd. Yes, Alma & Jess stated early on that they don't like to express themselves, but surely a bizarre pandemic could trigger a frenzy of emotions within them.
By the time we reached the freaky old woman, I hoped maybe there would be something to the movie. But sadly, all that freaky old woman was was a freaky old woman.