mixed feeling

Rating: 4/10 (13 June 2008)

Having just come from this movie, I cant help but get the feeling that the movie itself was indecisive. It seemed to attempt to combine Shyamalan's trademark suspense with more contemporary, quirky humor, with somewhat disheartening results.
I will say that when the movie creates suspense, it does it with amazing skill. This, however, is also the problem. This is only WHEN it creates suspense, and it rarely does. Less than a third of the movie held the thick atmosphere I came to see. It almost always seemed as though the unsettling atmosphere depicted in the trailers would last for about 5-10 minutes before the pace of the movie was broken by humorous moments.
Humor was quite prevalent through this movie, though half of it seems to be unintentionally delivered through awkwardly worded or poorly delivered lines.
The musical score, though enjoyable, was occasionally over-the-top, and altogether so dramatic that it even became amusing, especially in the beginning. This didn't happen too often, though, so it did not greatly hurt the film
The plot was nicely thought out, with references to real life scientific occurrences, and with the main plot itself actually bearing relation to factual phenomenon.
Make no mistake, this movie was not absolutely terrible, it simply could have been much, much better, especially when faced with what possibilities the plot held. Despite being nicely filmed, the movie does not deliver what was promised, and the combination of genres it seemed to attempt broke the pacing and atmosphere. Overall, these factors were severely detrimental to the overall feel of the movie and made it so that it was impossible to become truly immersed in the world of the movie.