A silly "Twilight Zone"-like plot chokes off the affecting love story in its subplot, for a very disappointing Shyamalan effort

Rating: Null/10 (4 March 2005)

This is a bad half-hour "Twilight Zone" episode padded to 108 minutes. Except the padding itself is actually pretty good.
The people of an isolated village are cut off from the rest of the world by their fear of the strange creatures that surround them in the woods. But the creatures seem to break their years-old alliance with the villagers when they breach the barrier between them and mutilate animals to show their displeasure.
The director M. Night Shyamalan and his photographer Roger Deakins have given us yet another beautiful-looking movie, which also boasts a fine score by James Newton Howard. The ensemble cast, which includes William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver among the village elders, is fine. I didn't much care for Adrien Brody as a quirky simpleton. It's a shallow performance, though competent enough to do no major damage.
What kills the movie is Shyamalan's godawful script. It includes not one but two twist endings. The first twist is so predictable that he'd have been better off just revealing it to us from the beginning. Shyamalan would have had an easier time making it all plausible if he weren't so taxed with the effort of concealing his surprise. As it is, there are far too many things that don't make sense.
The second twist ending is so ludicrous, he should have jettisoned it in the first rewrite. Shyamalan makes the whole movie feel like amateur night with this silly stunt-ending and by picking the worst possible moment to make his cameo appearance. He comes off like a self-satisfied magician winking at his audience as he reveals his trick and cocks his ear for the applause; all we're doing is groaning and rolling our eyes.
When I said the padding is actually good, I'm talking about the love story between Joaquin Phoenix and newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard. Their story is warm and affecting. Too bad it's choked off by a lot of dumb gimmicks.