the moody style effectively camouflages some pretty thin material

Rating: 6/10 (12 January 2011)

The director and star of the supernatural blockbuster 'The Sixth Sense' reunite to see if box office lightning will strike twice: hardly likely, given the astronomical numbers posted by the earlier film. This time around Bruce Willis is again the odd man out, the only survivor of a fatal train crash who begins to suspect he owes his life to something more than mere serendipity. Is he an accidental plaything of fate, or (believe it or not) an unsuspecting comic book superhero down on his luck? A little more ambiguity might have added some necessary tension to the far-fetched scenario, but from the first frame the issue is hardly in doubt, and as a result the obligatory surprise ending (around which the entire film revolves) is unfairly deflated, trading the compelling supernatural hook of its predecessor for an intriguing but esoteric Twilight Zone plot twist demanding a more laborious suspension of disbelief.
Writer director M. Night Shyamalan maintains the same somber, self-conscious style that so effectively marked his earlier film, with long meaningful pauses separating every portentous line of dialogue, and a deliberate editing scheme favoring suspense over easy shock tactics. It's refreshing to find a moviemaker not enslaved to Hollywood's current hyper-kinetic visual fads, but it's also safe to say the pacing flags at more than one point: Rod Serling could have told the same story just as well in less than 30 minutes. An economic, two-character cast (Willis, plus Samuel Jackson as his crackpot guide to reluctant enlightenment) makes the whole thing look not unlike a student screen writing exercise, pulled out of Shyamalan's old college trunk and hastily dusted off to help keep his suddenly hot career from losing any momentum.