Shyamalan's worst, dumb plot is a 30 min Twilight Zone padded out to 2 hrs

Rating: Null/10 (10 June 2005)

What a drop from two 10's (Sixth Sense, Signs) and a 9 (Unbreakable) to this lousy excuse for a film. Remember when the Twilight Zone would do this kind of story in a half-hour and do it better? The surprise of there being a modern world outside of the village is no surprise at all. It was all spelled out in big letters: AMISH-LIKE VILLAGE. If you didn't see this coming, well you must have fallen asleep. It's so ludicrous as to be laughable, this wonderful utopia hidden away in a forest and protected by who knows whose tons of money. So much so that they can bribe the FAA to make it a no-fly zone. Yes, that's right, it's utopia built on lies and deceit and the filthy money they so disdain. Oh, of course the outside world is rotten, and they aren't. But within this utopia, we see envy, jealousy, murder. They wanted to get away from it and brought it with them. I doubt this was supposed to be one of the points, it's just serendipity that it's there at all. As for the village setup, logic would say put it in a faraway place where there would be no need for a big fence and security, not in the middle of New York or Pennsylvania. I would give it a 1, but there are some genuinely spooky moments in the beginning, so it gets 2. Here's hoping this will be the only low point of Shyamalan's film career.