Wow.

Rating: 1/10 (10 August 2005)

When you consider the enormous number of people involved in the production of a film, from studio execs, to proof readers, to gaffers and grips, it is simply staggering to think that so many things could go so far wrong all in the same film. M. Night was given a pretty high credit limit after the Sixth Sense, and deservedly so, but he's gone way over his limit with this one and hasn't made a payment in months.
To start, the story is atrocious and predictable. I won't say too much for fear of spoiling the non-surprises for anyone else who wants to guess along, but the plot, such as it is, is simply dreadful. I don't think it gives away too much to say that towards the end of the movie, it becomes necessary for someone to venture into the dangerous, uncharted, forbidden woods to seek medicine from another town. So who gets sent, you ask? A blind girl. Yeah, a blind girl. They send a girl without the gift of sight to wander through a forest to find medicine in "the towns." I guess every sighted person, including her father, was too busy fighting with their agents to go.
The acting was unusually wretched. Adrian Brody didn't even phone in this performance, he texted it. Not that he was given much to do. Watching Sigourney Weaver try to choke out this vile dialogue was simply painful. She sounded like she was constantly working off cue cards, and who could blame her? The worst of all, by far, was Bryce Howard as the occasionally blind girl. I say occasionally because her blindness seemed to come and go depending on the scene. When used as a plot point, she's blind as a bat and can barely find her front door from her own porch; when the "story" lies elsewhere, she maintains perfect eye contact with everyone she speaks to, moves casually around strange people in strange places, and races through fields like a gazelle. What? In all fairness, the actors may not have been at fault. The direction in this film was some of the worst I've ever seen. Bryce should be a smart enough actress to know that blind people generally don't stare eye-to-eye with people, but in the end, wasn't it Night's job to catch problems and correct them? When he saw an otherwise dignified cast tripping over his clumsy, awkward dialogue, couldn't he have changed it? I guess that's expecting an awful lot from the same man who served up this flaming dog turd of a story in the first place. Even in the realm of films about boys who see dead people, super heroes, and aliens, this story is HIGHLY implausible. HIGHLY.
This movie is an affront to good films everywhere. Since most movie-watchers are not avid fans of craft and art, however, seeking only another excuse to stare at a TV and eat popcorn for two hours, films like this will continue to be made, and the viewers will continue to surf to IMDb to give them 7's. Hay carumba...
***SPOILER WARNING*** For those of you who have seen it; come on! Talking to dead people I bought; super powers, I bought; alien invasion? Absolutely. But you mean to tell me that in 2005, with GPS satellites that can instantly photograph any address you want and the ever-present threat of terrorism, NO ONE has discovered that a bunch of idiots have erected a giant village in the middle of a protected reserve? NO ONE? When three dozen people from the same town all disappeared at the same time to go start this village, no one went looking for them? Give me a break.