Praying with Anger

I saw this film at a film festival many years ago and it has haunted me (in a beautiful way) for years and I have longed to see it again.

In a rare portrayal of a teenager, this boy is smart and sensitive and open. All the characters are interesting.

The third world spirituality and visuals, remind me in tone, of THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY.

I would like to get a DVD of this movie.

i loved the boy's visit to the Hindu temple and to his ancestral home. Magnificent.

Shyamalan made it when he was 22. Please release it whoever owns it -- NYU???

This is quite far from a typical M. Night Shyamalan movie. This is what I would deem a typical 90s coming of age story with the twist of Indian culture involved. While the movie wasn't anything outstanding, and surely is not the M. Night Shyamalan movie you may be looking for, the movie itself is not bad.

It was very difficult to view this movie, and hard to find. If I wasn't a fan of M Night and didn't want to view all of his movies, do I think I would take this path again? No. Would I recommend this movie for others to watch? With the quality and difficulty required, also no. But I'm certainly not holding pitchforks, and I was able to watch the movie end to end and enjoy it. If you want to watch it or find yourself with a better copy than an online recording, all to you. But for me, I don't think it's worth the hassle for the content involved.

M. Night's debut film is hard to judge properly with such a low quality version of it on the Internet. It's essentially a student film and a pretty uninteresting one honestly. I'll give M. Night some credit on playing the main character and having a passable music score in it, but that's really all the good things going for this film.

The performances are amateur and it doesn't leave much of an impression by the end. It's kind of cool there were little glimpses of dialogue and ideas in this film that foreshadow what movies M. Night would make in the near future. Oh well, you gotta start somewhere in the industry I guess, so can't be too harsh on this debut.

3/10.

This is it, where it all started. M. Night Shyamalan's first movie "Praying With Anger" is a film about an Indian-American boy going to India, the place where his parents were born, so he can learn of his families way of life. I'll start out with saying that the concept is very intriguing. The plot is well written enough, but not perfect. Some characters are a bit inconsistent with there goals and behavior. The acting is decent, but again not perfect. Shyamalan himself is the strongest actor in the film, everyone else is okay. I'm not knocking the actors though, I know it's a hard job. And finally the filmmaking. It's a bit amateurish, but than again, Shyamalan was an amateur when he made this. It's his first film after all, it's good for what he had. If he made the movie now, I guarantee it would have better acting, cinematography, writing, and editing. In general, the movie is an impressive feat. Especially for his first movie, being self funded and all, I'd give it about a 6.6 out of 10.

'Praying with Anger' is rarely seen semi-autobiographical debut by director M. Night Shyamalan. There is a rumor that after the success of 'The Sixth Sense' Shyamalan bought all the VHS copies of the film because he was embarrassed by it. Although the film didn't get exactly a wide release first place. 'Praying with Anger' has primarily shown at film festivals, and some second hand VHSs still circle around and occasionally it pops up in the internet.

This is not a movie to get out of your pants for. Maybe if you're a hardcore Shyamalan fan. I was personally clad to see the film because I'm interested in famous and renown directors' first works.

The story and pacing is uneven. It takes some time to build up any interest to continue watching it. Most scenes don't have the impact that filmmaker obviously wanted to have and they simply fall flat and cliché ridden. Mixed with occasional humor and little hints with supernatural and totally out of place awkwardly directed scenes (hey, let's just play some football with these kids over there). The acting is nothing special - not a single ultimately bad or masterfully good performance to point out. If becoming film director wouldn't have worked out for M. Night he could always play some Indian comic relief side character in some silly sitcom.

'Praying with Anger' is not very strong film, quite forgettable actually, and it's not strong even for debut, but it showed then that Shyamalan has some talent to become capable