Disappointing and Anti-Climactic.

Rating: Null/10 (30 July 2004)

***WARNING EXTREME SPOILERS LIE AHEAD***
M. Night Shyamalan is a good director, no doubt about it. However his writing has always been somewhat... how should I put this... mundane. There has never been anything special to his scripts, the only reason his films stand out among a crowd of other equal films, is because of his incredible directing skills. Unfortunately there is an old saying in Hollywood: "A great director can make a good script great! A bad director can make a great script good. But no director can make a bad script good."
This is a perfect example for the quote in the above paragraph. The movie was dead before filming began. The premise seemed good at first. "People in the 1800's surrounded by woods, filled with mythical and dangerous creatures." But it was lost in it's twist. Twists have been Night's forte. This one however was not that exciting, it did not make your hair stand up like in "The Sixth Sense" or "Signs", and it did not give you great satisfaction like in "Unbreakable" the twist was the year was in fact around 1987 and the town elders were really modern day people from a "traumatic experience clinic" who decided to go and live inside a wild-life preserve to shield themselves and their children from the horrors of the modern world. The elders had lied about the creatures in order to keep everyone inside the town's borders and never stray into the modern world. Quite disappointing in my opinion. The film was not scary either, It is filled with overly blunt "stingers" (quick loud scary music playing as a dark shadow passes by the screen) Night has used many stingers before, but tastefully. He abused the stingers in this film as a method of last resort. There is ONLY ONE event in the film that will have you gasping. I will not ruin that for you if you have not yet seen the film, it is worth watching. And finally the film is predictable. You can guess it within an hour of when it starts.
The acting is first rate, and really saves the film from completely bombing.
The direction is very good, but as I said before it can not save poor writing.

5/10 - Worth a look.