Downhill after the first 5 minutes

Rating: 4/10 (8 September 2008)

This movie was surprisingly a drag, and after that shock opener it is really a sad fact. They have a couple of good scenes thrown in there, but it was all accompanied by absolutely terrible dialogue. The propaganda was way off the charts, and it became blatantly obvious where the movie was headed.
What is up with the so-called scientists in this movie? They put the main character as a high school science teacher, but teaches his class that nature cannot be explained or understood? The whole point of science is to try to understand nature by research and observation. And when a large portion of the US is wiped out by a neurochemical, the only "scientist" they can find for TV can't come up with anything better than "the plants have taken revenge"? I'm not even a biologist, and I could postulate more likely scenarios. Like, it may have been isolated by particular new variants in species, and the species only had enough time to spread so far. Hell, they have even found vastly different chemicals produced in remains of the exact same species. Where is my peer review?
What bothered me the most were the choices of death scenes. For a person who has thought a lot about death in his life, the characters (though amusing) were really choosing some unusual ways to end their pitiful existences. Passing up a perfectly good shard of glass in favor of bashing their head against the wall... Choosing to activate a tractor to mow yourself over rather than just rip the blade out by hand... Waiting for the last person to finish with the gun before using it... Hell, these outlandishly creative solutions take a functional mind just to come up with. If I suddenly had the urge to do myself in, I would scramble for the first thing I saw and make the best use out of it I could. I wouldn't get nearly that creative until long after my first attempts fail.
Honestly, I do have to give major props to Shyamalan for originality, I don't think anyone's ever tried to make an antagonist out of a gentle breeze before, let alone pull it off. But he could have at least left some of it up to the imagination, thrown out at least a dozen theories and let the viewers decide... I always feel so cheated when the writers spell out what is going on, as if I were too dumb to figure it out or come up with my own conclusion.
Do better next time! (as if anybody's listening)