Do I have to be the one that says it?

Rating: 3/10 (8 March 2005)

Let us just get it out of the way- M Night Shyamalan sucks. He is a horrible director. He glosses over poorly written dialogue and shallow, plodding scripts with sumptuous cinematography and good tunes. He is so inept that he cannot even get good performances out of William Hurt and Joaquin Phoenix, and the probable reason many people complain of boredom is because M Night. is no Kubrick- he does not know how to construct hypnotic sequences of dialogue between interlocutors, or even how to shoot dialogue effectively (first poor scene I remember- the daughter asking William Hurt for his permission to court Lucius). Nearly everything Noah (that’s the retarded guy) does is to advance this poorly written script, which makes it obvious that he is included only to advance it, and hence, more inferior writing becomes apparent (if the rest of the one dimensional cast did not make it so already).
If the film wanted to make its allegedly "brilliant" statement, it was not necessary to have the film set in modern times- that was supposed to be some sort of "whoa, I got you" climax to make up for the preceding tedium, which, by the way, was not that difficult to figure out since M. Night prides himself on "twists." The revelation of the monster rouse is discovered in the least cinematic way possible. Instead, someone should have started to notice that the monsters may be a farce, and finally confronted the elders. More incidents involving the monsters should have unfolded (including all the rituals the people performed to keep them safe)- unless of course you enjoyed the redundancy of the interminable middle hour.
The entire thread about living outside of modern times should have been discarded, since the film gives it short philosophical elaboration anyway, and it is not a brilliant rumination, unless you're the same person who just read Brave New World or 1984 etc. and thinks they have some sort of philosophical depth now absorbed into their soul. The plot line about the monsters would have been sufficient- it would have tackled the actions of the elders, could have taken place in the 19th century, and brought all the same philosophical qualms, which are not even tackled by the film, just raised. Unfortunately, even that plot line is shoddy and unsuccessful.