The answer to Shyamalan's roller coaster career... keeps blowing in the wind!

Rating: 5/10 (19 November 2011)

Auteur M. Night Shyamalan's latest fantasy thriller borrows a great deal from "Invasion of the body snatchers" and "The stand" as mysterious, spectacular mass suicides spread across the American East coast. An increasingly smaller group of protagonists in Philadelphia flee into the countryside as the enigma points to biological reasons...
The opening hook is really something - and the first 45 minutes are equally tense, with unpredictability and moody visuals its biggest assets. But increasingly dopier (and ditto dialog) situations and character actions slowly drag this down, as the script digs itself into a big hole. The emotional content isn't entirely successful, either - it comes in moments where we don't know the characters yet to care enough (like Leguizamo's goodbye) or later on, when it has already crossed into the turkey farm one too many times.
Shyamalan's career is truly a roller-coaster, as this is one step up from "The lady in the water" but yet one steep step down from all his previous works. I do like the thematic matter, though, that the planet Earth has finally had enough of humans and finding a perfect, sinuous way to dispatch us all. That final message is also ambiguous; is it pro-natalist, or a scenario that spells an ultimatum from nature if we do procreate? The apocalypse answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind... and so does the Shyamalan enigma saga!
5 out of 10 from Ozjeppe