Not only a movie about watching movies...

Rating: Null/10 (31 August 2004)

As in his prior movies Signs, Unbreakable, Shyamalan continually cheats the audience with ambiguous leads for its great excitement.
According to me, the movie's intend is to make concrete in the audience mind the question raised by the protagonists in the village : could something good result from being cheated ?
Shyamalan succeed in making this concrete by producing awareness in the spectators mind. By example, by making watching a movie in a dark theater and being mystified by sounds and shadows becoming as real than it is for the Ivy character when she's lost in the dark deep forest. Therefore, with several audience experience all along his film, Shyamalan helps the spectator to go further into this implicit question : could something good result from being mystified ?
This movie, appears to be a movie about watching movies. The drama of the Shyamalan script not only comes from characters inner conflicts but also from an inner spectator conflict : I know it's just a movie but I want to believe it, strongly (please read the prior comment under this one to be convinced of this).
I will not discuss about political meanings of the film by drawing parallels between the village and some well known administration. I prefer to focus on a Shyamalan obsession in this film and prior ones : the lost innocence. We can't enjoy listening a fairy tale without remembering brief memories of our past innocence. Maybe enjoying a movie works the same way.
This Shyamalan movie is both an investigation about the innocence disappearance and an attempt to restore it in the spectators mind through multiple angle reflections between this spectator inner conflict mentioned earlier and the Walter main character's evolving point of view : sensible Vs superstitious points with Walter and Lucius, rational Vs passionate points of view with Walter and Ivy, realistic Vs fanatic points of view with Walter and The Old Ones, idealistic Vs realistic points of view with Walter and The Old Ones at the end.
This movie supports me in the belief that cinema is a powerful way to remember its past innocence, even very briefly. I think it's has been an efficient way to reinforce some repressed hopes and dreams I had younger. I wish you the same experience.