Terrible.........a good indie film though....

Rating: 2/10 (25 June 2008)

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPLOILERS!
Just an awful movie. Honestly, I've seen better indie films than this. At least those had swearing and nudity. For M. Night's first R film, he went at it like a Christian who doesn't swear and working up the nerve to use them. With ONLY Shyamalan writing and directing, it almost was an indie film. SPOILER: Nothing bad at all was said until the last 20 minutes. For starters, it was a good idea,but he didn't go anywhere with it. The trees were being threatened by too many people together at once! KILLER BREEZE! The bushes are plotting against them! I was annoyed and amused by the sadly true social commentary that if anything happened that kills more than 15 people its terrorism. The plot had potential. But sadly, it seemed like he threw it together in a month. Probably the only scenes he had done before the beginning of June we're the clips from the trailer. The bee theory was randomly thrown in there just to add a few more minutes. I saw the story about the bees disappearing maybe two weeks before the movie was released. The guy talking to the plants in the nursery is acceptable, fine, people do that. But once they got to Wahlberg talking to a field and reasoning with a plastic plant, you begin to wonder if the movie was meant to be scary.
Secondly, the plain low-quality of almost the whole movie. The microphone came into view in 4 or 5 different scenes. then at the end with the french subtitles, they were a little too far down to read all of the bottom line. I don't know we just got a bad copy and it was on the projector wrong or if its like that nation-wide.The second time the microphone came into the shot i looked around to see if anyone else noticed it and some guys in front of me were pointing it out. Worse, you could see the sound guy jerk the thing from person to person depending on who was talking. SPOILER: In a later scene when a women stand up, i was watching the mic thinking, 'shes gonna hit her head'. Some guy behind me had the same idea and said "bonk!" After they figure out the trees are taking out larger groups and break up, you don't need a real great eye to notice the circular pattern in the field from the helicopter above them. When they start running, they yell to each other, and you can barely hear them because they had to mute out the helicopter 100ft above them. Then there's the inconsistency of the crazy old lady they find being alone and dying. Finally, at the end, the women sitting in the bathroom in silence was awkward and went on for too long. It would've been find had there been ANY TYPE of back ground music, but they didn't have it in the budget.
Now for the cast. That had to have been the easiest money Ashlyn Sanchez ever made. She had few lines and she either ran or was carried away. Mark Wahlberg is terrible in this movie. He's standing in the field for 3 minutes with the killer breeze coming at them, yelling for his girlfriend or wife or whoever she was t give him a minute to think. Meanwhile while thats going on, the twitchy little army guy is unloading like 13 bullets into his group. I know people are going to say "he reloaded". But if you can think of nothing else but killing your self, chances are you're not counting how much ammo is in your clip.
The only reason i gave it two stars is because its a great movie to go see a second time and do some Mystery Science Theater 3000 with.
True and honest, as soon as the movie ended, i called out "that was a funny movie!" There was a point when everyone laughed in the theater. The only disturbing part was when they drove the Jeep into the tree, because i know someone who died driving into a tree.
I have to end this by saying, boom operator Michael Scott, needs to be fired! and dock the rest of the sound department's salary. Also, do most movies have payroll accountant and assistant accountant in with the movie credits? I think they just need to make the credits longer.