Slow, pretentious, disappointing...

Rating: 2/10 (25 February 2005)

The opening sequences were quite promising: sombre musical score coupled with slow moving shots of misty tree branches... OK, not very original but convincing. The opening scene adds up more expectations: a funeral of a 7 year old boy, the tombstone telling us exactly the year being 1897. Was he killed by the creatures, the viewer might wonder as during the wake following the funeral distant howling is heard coming from the woods, causing everyone present - except an obviously insane person - to adopt a serious and worried look on their faces. And then... We are confronted right away with Shyamalan's obvious obsession with the color red: while focusing subtly on it in "The 6th sense" was intriguing, reusing it in this film with a vengeance means that there is simply a lack of imagination on his side. So we are treated duly with close ups of a red flower, red berries etc. while being told through the movie's protagonists that this is the "bad" color (for those who don't get it otherwise...) For no apparent reason, we witness a lengthy scene where a minor female character professes her love for Lucius Hunt (one of the major male characters, simply discarded in the second half of the movie) - only to be followed by another lengthy scene of a lullaby for the brokenhearted. This simply cannot be considered as a buildup of any kind but just as a filler - unfortunately, the same can be said about dozens and dozens of scenes that follow, containing pointless small talk in strange English which for sure was not used around 1897 (just look up some contemporary literature or newspaper article from that period). So we see them (i.e. the villagers) talk in a green house, talk in a hall, talk at a wedding, talk outside, talk inside, talk, talk, talk... Of course, after a while I couldn't help looking at the DVD display to see how much of the movie is left. And it even gets worse: through this constant chit-chat we learn that the creatures (called for no apparent reason "Those We Don't Speak Of" - still better than "Those Who Are Hiding In The Woods And We Speak Of But Never Admit To") made an agreement with the village folks not to step over the imaginary border - which would keep everyone wondering how this deal was struck. And on top of that, these creatures seem to be quite good fellas actually - they seem to recognize the fact that the mentally challenged character (played by Adrian Brody) has a pure and innocent heart so they don't harm him at all even if he does enter into their territory - or that's what we are told at least. At the same time, the local children are afraid to death to even stand near the border (as it is shown in one sequence) - which implies that their hearts are neither innocent nor pure so they will be justly killed by the creatures with unique and keen understanding of the human soul. Anyhow, at one point the wood inhabitants seem to be pretty upset by the behavior of the villagers although the latter have not done anything so unusual to provoke them - and that's when the going gets tough: the village gets invaded by one (yes, I am not kidding) creature which is enough to make everyone hide in their basements (!?!). The normal question that will pop up in everyone's mind is: are the villagers actually a hybrid between chicken and human or what? Back then people in villages like that usually kept rifles in their houses - and if they did not have rifles for whatever reason, then what about axes, scythes, pitchforks etc.? But it turns out that the creatures are just out for fun and into some kind of Helloween rituals: they just walk around the village and don't break anything nor do they harm anyone. I guess they should have at least thrown around some toilet paper in return for not getting any candy. After this raid, being so scary and devastating, the villagers seem to be scared stupid - so when Lucius is stabbed by the aforementioned mentally handicapped one, no one dares to even think of crossing the woods to go to "the towns" to get medicine. And of course, why - what if a creature jumps in front of you and goes "booh"? So why not send a blind girl to go through the forest she has never entered before so that she can go to a town she has never been to so that she can get some medicine she has never heard of? It's a piece of cake, right?? To make things simpler, the blind girl is not given any money either - I guess, the "village" despises it as source of all evil... surely there will be a kind soul out there having pity on a blind girl in a muddy dress asking for some life saving medicine!
By the time the "secret" of the scary creatures gets lifted, I was bored enough not to bother who the h*ck they are. Same applies to the second "twist" - I admit I did not expect it since the year was clearly shown in the beginning but so much the worse if Shyamalan is using tricks like that to poke the viewer with a "gotcha" grin on his face - I would just call this cheap cheating.
I am sure though that if Shyamalan had delivered the suspense and chills the audience expected, they would have forgiven him for being fooled like that. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen either: the creatures turn out to be a "farce" as William Hurt's character poignantly admits - too bad this revelation applies to the whole movie as well.