Ugh.

Rating: 4/10 (30 July 2004)

This movie was extremely disappointing.
The ads made it look like a scary, thrilling movie. It was not. M Night's past movies made us think it would have a surprise ending that was interesting and made sense. It did not.
The sad thing is that the twist wasn't even really a twist, since it was so disgustingly apparent from the first frame that I didn't understand how anyone even considered it a surprise. Sad. Really, truly sad.
Up through a point (until I saw the creatures on-screen for the first time), it was a spooky movie. Anyone who saw both this and Dark Crystal will know where the problem lies.
Out of all of his movies, this was by far the worst. It was slow. It was plodding. And, for a movie that from the previews seemed intent on being a thriller, those two are instant death. (And for those who say "you just don't understand slow movies", two of my favorite films are The Others and Braveheart, both of which are much slower than this one -- but MUCH better executed).
It wasn't a horrible movie, but it wasn't good by any stretch of the imagination. I did my best to give it a fair score (a '4') and not give it an instant '1' just to counterbalance the 10 that most people seem to be hurling at it (which is surprising since even the biggest fans of M Night's can't consider this a 'perfect' film).
The movie should have instilled fear, but what I got was a big steaming pile of "That was IT?!?"