So many elements of this film annoyed me, but I was thoroughly entertained throughout.

Rating: 6/10 (13 June 2008)

M. Night Shyamalan seems to be having trouble keeping his writing and direction fresh. The Lady in the Water was his worst attempt at originality with not only a strange, boring incoherent plot, but with stupid flat characters and boring dialogue. In my opinion, this is his second worst film, and this was not bad...well, maybe it was, but it was still pretty entertaining.
Strange events begin to happen, starting in Central Park. Everyone in the park stops, walks back a few steps, says some pointless drivel, and then kills themselves, in many various gruesome ways. The mass suicides begin to spread, and people begin to leave their homes to find a place not contaminated by whatever is causing this strange reactions in humans. Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) is a high school science teacher, and with his wife, Alma (Zooey Deschanel), and his co-worker's daughter Jess, they travel to avoid this strange plague.
The main problem with this movie is the terrible dialogue. Some lines had me cringing and wondering what Mr. Shyamalan was thinking when he wrote these clunky words on paper. Had he been watching corny romantic comedies and bad sit-coms and figured he'd make a science fiction/drama with the same bad lines? My least favorite line in the movie, and possibly one of my least favorite lines I've ever heard is where John Leguizamo's character dumps his daughter off on Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel. When Zooey reaches for her hand, Leguizamo says "Don't hold her hand unless you mean it!" What the heck does that even mean? He's dumping his daughter off on them, and he tells her not to hold his daughter's hand unless she means it...means what? Means that she wants to hold her hand? What an awful line and delivery, and there are many of these little "gem" lines throughout. The writing for each character is the same, making even the little 8 year old girl seem like an adult, and I would rather hear diversity in the characters instead of hearing a movie full of M. Night Shyamalans. The actors seemed to even change for their roles. Mark Wahlberg gives an odd performance as a normal person who isn't a jerk or a tough guy. It's hard to tell if his performance is bad or good, it's still weird to me, but his character was likable, so I guess it was effective.
The direction artistically is good. It looks nice, and the camera work looks just fine. But, when the characters talk is when Shyamalan's weaknesses in direction show. Instead of making individual characters, he has them all act the same. They all whisper for dramatic effect a lot, and they cry a lot, no matter the situation. It just gets annoying. It's similar to the writing in that it gets repetitive. This is one of the few movies where more establishing shots might have actually helped it, just to give the audience a break from unrelenting sameness.
Now, this movie has some very bad qualities, but it is not a bad movie. From the very beginning I was interested and entertained, and even some of the awful writing caused an uncomfortable laugh in me and some others in the audience. The plot is pretty original and unique, and though it could have been handled a little better, the plot was developed nicely. There were also a few jump scenes, which is hard to produce when nothing really jumps out at you, and each scene takes place in the daytime, but the jump scenes are still thrown in there. The suicides are gruesome and fans of the violent and morbid will love the blood and gore, even though Shyamalan didn't go overboard with the violence. He wisely used it sparingly, but enough for us to get how horrible these events truly are.
So M. Night Shyamalan has come a long way from The Sixth Sense...a long way down. The Sixth Sense was a masterpiece, and it seems his techniques are getting old, but aren't totally useless. He made a suspenseful movie, despite the silliness of everything. Don't expect a classic going in, because you won't get one. Put your standards lower than they would be for "Lady in the Water" and you might find you can squeeze some goodness even out of the bad.
My rating: ** 1/2 out of ****. 85 mins. R for gruesome violence.