A great concept poorly executed

Rating: 4/10 (30 January 2005)

Having read several reviews of the movie (none of which contained spoilers) before actually seeing it, my expectations were minimal. I decided to watch the movie without reference to the director's previous films so I could simply take it for what it was. Even then, however, I was not particularly impressed.
The concept was clever and interesting, but I don't think M. Night made the best of it. Most of the characters were not very well developed, so I didn't feel much connection with them, and the editing was uneven, as if scenes that would have created greater continuity had been cut out. This left me feeling somewhat annoyed and confused, not by the mystery contained in the story, because that was easy enough to figure out fairly early on, but by the manner in which it was executed.
The cast, of course, was very impressive. Most of the actors are top notch, but none of them -- with the exception of Bryce Dallas Howard, who played Ivy, the blind girl who was in love with Lucius (Jacquin Phoenix) -- was given enough room to make much of an impact. On top of that, Phoenix looked and felt out of place as Ivy's love interest. In my opinion, he just didn't do a very good job of acting.
Howard, on the other hand, did a fairly good job. The problem with her character was that she was given too much screen time. I understand that Ivy was the central character in the story, but the many scenes of her professing her undying love for Lucius were way too melodramatic and over the top for me. The biggest problem with her character, however, was that in way too many scenes she did not at all look or behave like a blind woman. In this respect, the most unbelievable scene was toward the end, when she was running through the woods to escape the "monster" that was pursuing her. I ask you, how can a blind person run through thick woods without once running into a tree or branch? It defies all logic and destroys the believability of the scene.
In sum, the idea behind the movie was compelling, but the director did a poor job of carrying it out. It seems to me that the concept would have been better executed within the confines of half-hour or an hour-long TV episode such as The Twilight Zone. Rod Serling would have skipped the corny dialogue and meandering plot and stuck to the essentials. Sometimes less is more.