Not GREAT, but still not bad...

Rating: 7/10 (1 October 2009)

Just finished watching it now, and it really makes a difference when you're watching something alone.
First off, I'll start with the bad. The bad was basically the underlying environmentalist world-view. Plants fight back! Well, I personally don't believe the plants are going to kill us all, and I resent the explanation given. It's downright ridiculous, and it insults the audience's intelligence.
Some of the lines could've been better, but I've seen every Shyamalan film to know that this is how he writes: like telling a story. Some of the reactions to certain events are quite unrealistic and could've been acted much better. For instance, someone falls off a building and the construction worker who sees this takes about 7 seconds to actually think about running over to the guy, not to mention the two other workers he's talking with. Various emotions given off are a bit strange for the situations... I resented the fact that the mean old lady who housed the protagonists at one point was subtly implicated as a hard-core Catholic...
But other than that I enjoyed the film. It's quite a thriller and will definitely have you jumping a few times. I now understand why it's rated R, for the fact that there are many, many instances of people killing themselves in various, horrible ways. But scratching the fact that this movie has an environmentalist lean on things, this was quite entertaining and I recommend it to hard-core M. Knight fans. Sure, it had many flaws, and the explanations were far from realistic, but by golly it was still entertaining! I've seen many others comment about the casting choices being "terrible," but I really can't see how they did a bad job at their roles they were given. Actors are actors, and they work the best they can at what they're acting for. The script was very interesting, and when M. Knight wanted some comic relief, he gave it with perfect timing. Conversations between everyone about everyday life was heartwarming and real, and gave you the sense that these were, in a small way, actual people in a real situation.
Camera angles and lighting were superb, as always Mr. Shyamalan. So all in all, for the quality of the film as compared with every other film made in history, I'd give this a 5/10. For entertaining quality, I give it a 7/10. Movies are almost always meant to entertain its audiences, and this movie did the job it set out to do: entertain. At least, it did it for me.