klbowersox

I have been pulling for M. Night Shyamalan as he has bravely battled his ego all of these years. I loved The Sixth Sense. I found Unbreakable flawed but intriguing. I loved both Signs and The Village all the way up until their endings drove both of their plots to Dopeyville. In all of these I could see M. Night held a truly great talent, but also saw that no matter how talented anyone else thought he was, M. Night's opinion of his talent was immeasurably higher. In fact I have been expecting a day when he starts insisting that his name be followed by the phrase "Super Genius" like Wile E. Coyote back when he talked. (M. Night came dangerously close to that when he gave himself the largest screen credit in film history at the end of Signs.)

Well something worse than that has happened, and that thing is Lady in the Water. I went to this expecting to be enthralled and intrigued for nearly all of its running length. Sure I knew there was a good chance that I would be grossly disappointed in the last five minutes, but even then I expected the bulk of the movie to make the disappointment worth it. Instead I got a ham-handed sledgehammer of an allegory filled with sub-par (for M. Night) cinematography, technical goofs (the boom mike operator should be fired), Ed Wood level dialog, a hackneyed inane story (Narfs? Scrunts? Dr. Seuss M. Night ain't) that seems to think it is treading new ground, and hollow characters. No mystery, no twists of any interest, none of that M. Night charm.

The only really good performance was by the Lady herself. The rest seem to phone in their performances. Even M. Night himself. (Did anyone else find the dialog between he and his sister more creepy than humorous? Maybe it was because I expected him to fly into a violent rage at any moment, shouting "You dare mock me!?")

I cannot fathom that some of these reviewers actually saw the same movie I saw. This was a pretentious, high-handed, naked emperor of a movie that had no idea what it was trying to do. You will definitely want to wait to see this one on DVD, and then just to mstie it.

I liked the first one and after seeing this stupid rip-off of it I was shocked to realize that it too had been directed by Wes Craven! What is the matter with that guy? Is he schizo?

The only reason to see this garbage is that it could possibly be the only film in history where a dog has a flashback. (Not including movies where the dog is the main character.) Craven was obviously stretching for ANY way to pad this sucker out with footage from the first one. While he was at it he might have padded it out with some of the GOOD footage from the first one.

The Hills Have Eyes wasn't perfect but it did build suspense and had some genuine horror. Part II fails on every level.

Wes, be ashamed, be very ashamed.