Drivel

Rating: 1/10 (7 June 2007)

This was actually one of the worst movies I've ever seen. The scriptwriter should be sent back to school - albeit for the fact that the community in which these people live is remote, the stiltedness of their language is so excruciating that it is either to the credit or shame of the actors who attempted to deliver it. I surmised that the writer/director Manoj Night Shyamalan was trying his best to make the lines meaningful and potent, however he forgot to make them readable with the resulting effect that they become flabby and laughably meaningless.
The actors were very patchy, and with such a strong cast, one would have thought that they were able to carry it off with more aplomb, and to be fair, in some cases this did happen. Particularly Joaquin Phoenix, who was gamely trying to make as much as he could of the script to be as naturalistic and as colloquial as possible. The rest of the actors seemed resigned to the fact that it was nearly impossible and gave in to the inevitability that this was one of the more turgid scripts committed to celluloid.
The plot was farcical and the cutesy homespun scenes were rather clichÃ©d. There were noticeable appearances of the furniture, all of Shaker design, or similar, rather telegraphing the fact that this was an Amish-like community but without the religion, oddly.
The only good point in this film was the scene in which the red-cowled creature first appeared, which would have been more chilling if the film had not thus far been ridiculous. The inexplicable leap from the apparent recent death of a child in 1897 to the appearance of a modern 4x4 was baffling - a directorial fault, or conceit. It rather reminded me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Except without humour.
Bunkum. And nothing else.