Interesting intentions destroyed by a superficial story and conclusion, weak acting, silly atmosphere and a wrong preview and publicity

Rating: 1/10 (5 April 2010)

When I saw the preview of the film, I thought that I would watch a horror movie with a dark atmosphere, in an interesting place where many weird characters live isolated from the modern way of life. Well, I know that it was Shyamalan's intention to do a superficial preview and then to surprise those who expected a slasher movie. He wanted to cheat and laugh about us and to present his critical story about the society of the village to a larger public. Many viewer talk about the philosophic intention of the film which should make it more interesting, intellectual and profound than an ordinary horror movie.
Okay, I understand all of those viewers... but when I go to watch what is announced and presented as a horror movie, I don't want to see a slow paced portrait of an isolated village that is manipulating population. Another thing is that the story is very low, has a very weak development, but normally, Shyamalan surprises us with an interesting ending like he did in "The sixth sense", but here, he fails, because the ending is not only quite disappointing to me, but was also very clear after I've had seen half of the movie. You expect something else than and in the end you have to realise: "Oh no, he really made it end like this!" A part of this wrong publicity and quite unspectacular ending, the actors are not touching the viewer and do almost all a quite poor job, the atmosphere is too forced, too exaggerated so that it isn't a menacing, dark atmosphere any more, but a quite silly one after a while, especially while the girl is walking through the forest in the end. And concerning the critical or philosophic element of the movie, Shyamalan just touches the topic, but doesn't go deep or intellectual enough to underline his thoughts and intentions with which I would mostly agree. This element could have been very interesting and open-minded, but the explanation in the end seems just to be a weak excuse for a slow and boring movie without any shocking element. It,s quite interesting to discuss about those intentions, but it isn't sadly worth watching this movie.
If you'd like a horror movie taking place in an isolated old school village, check out a movie like "Population 436".