Slow, a little dull to begin looks and sounds fantastic but fails to deliver the shock ending.

Rating: 7/10 (10 August 2004)

The movie starts off with an interesting premise, an isolated town away from civilization kept in line by fear of the monsters that roam the nearby woods. Unfortunately that's really about as interesting as M. Night Shyamalans latest offering gets.
Beautifully set in the woodlands of middle America, this little township certainly looks the part with excellent set design, cinematography and visual shots. This coupled with excellent sound effects certainly builds it up to being a Shyamalan movie. So far so good it looks and very importantly for this genre sounds the part too with excellent creepy noises from the darkness.
Character development is where this movies starts to slide, William Hurt the towns elder is simply a cardboard cut out bellowing out warnings and historical fact, Sigorney Weaver simply isn't in any way remotely interesting or important to this movie as her script and her role seem pointless. I genuinely thought Joachim Phoenix would be the saving grace or at least give us a little comedic relief like his character in Signs, but he barely even has lines and stumbles across the ones he does have. Bryce Dallas Howard is very good in what she has to do and is a star to look out for in the future, but sadly will not be remembered for this role.
Then, as per all Shyamalan movies, is the twist in the tale, well maybe this movie simply was thought out as well, but i figured it out from about half way through which simply ruined the movie for me. It wasn't nearly as surprising or interesting and any of his previous movies even the poor Unbreakable was better and more believable than this. The most thought provoking thing about Shylamans movies is the twist and in this simply fizzles out and leaves you feeling nothing for this movie no love, no thought, and a lack of caring for it. Maybe he has exhausted this type of movie now, this was one twist movie too many i feel. He should try his hand at telling a good story instead of trying to make us think about the movie when we leave, because most people wont think about this movie at all.