First of a kind

Rating: 3/10 (28 June 2004)

This was the first Shymalan's flick and i have to say that he made a good work creating a dark environment which is essential for a thriller. I guess the end was also a bit unexpected which gave some points on the project. Thats all with the positive side of the film. I'm afraid that the negative overcomes the positive easily. When i first saw this film i thought it was OK. I gave the creator the benefit of the doupth since it was his first movie and all.
This changed rapidly after watching his second movie.You see i didn't like the first one, i didn't liked it at all, but i convinced myself i didn't hate it cause i thought the director, as a first timer, having a low budget to work with he presented at least a honest effort to the public. Later on, after i watched Unbreakable and realized that this was the way that M.N.Shyamalan really wanted to direct i let myself free and expressed my true opinion.
This movie sucked as his second one. The budget of the flick wasn't small(we are talking about 60.000.000 dollars) and the absence of the visual F\X wasn't something of a trick to cover the absence of money in production. The Matrix was shoot with the same amount of money and you can see where the money went. Here nothing really happens. The action is slow, the acting is just tolerable and the script was a bit boring except the very original ending. This is one of the few ghost stories that i've seen with absolutely no visual effects(the others were mostly b-movies and low budget cults which by the way i enjoyed more). I don't want to get into details but i've also noticed some mistakes-gups in the script which, i'm sure, most of the people that have seen this film also noticed. The only thing that's annoying for me is the money that this film gathered at the box office, which were a lot. Watching all of Syamalans films makes me believe that he tricks people to watching them. He selects catchy topics for his movies and then he plays a game. The game is shooting the movies using minimum f\x trying to gather maximum people at the cinemas. I can say that he does this with success but i think that he is already a castaway in the minds of the true Sci-Fi of Horror fans. Don't take me wrong, i'm not into senseless use of CGI effects which can turn a movie in a video game(see Van Helsing) but when the topic is from the world of fantasy the director should add effects and substance creating a unique result.
Anyway i believe that people who haven't already seen the "Sixth Sense" should probably do it but i "sense" that this will be a one way ride and probably will never watch it again......I sure didn't.