Rocco3000

First some background. Loved Sixth Sense. Unbreakable is one of my favourite movies ever! Signs was a disappointment. Hated Village and Lady in the Water was only just OK. I stopped seeing MNS movies in theatres after Village. And after Happening, I will still be waiting for video.

The movie fails in so many ways; let me address them one at a time. The first most glaring reason is its main star, Mark Wahlberg. While I have liked him in some roles in the past, he completely fails to bring to life this goofy science teacher. I don't know why MNS chose him, because I never would have. While Walhberg is good sometimes, he has a very small range, and this was just not the right role for him.

Secondly the gore. Completely unnecessary, especially as I feel as though MNS is just not comfortable with it, which is why all his movies in the past have been very PG-13. All the gory and non-gory scenes happened in the same way as MNS treats all his scary scenes. It cuts away at the last moment, or the view is obstructed somehow, etc. Which I have always loved, as MNS is very good at crafting a scary scene. But here it was as though the producers were like "Ok MNS, your movies are failing and we need to tap into a different market, so just add in a couple gory scenes and we'll see if we can get the horror crowd." So in the end, we get a patchwork effort were only some of the death scenes were gory, and they were usually very poorly done, and still, honestly, kinda tame (nothing like Grindhouse).

Lastly the story. All I can say is that it just wasn't executed properly. There was too much emphasis on trying to explain everything, while trying to maintain a theme that you can't explain everything. And the explanation was not satisfying at all. And the scary/death scenes were...well...just not that scary.

Unfortunately MNS is slowly becoming a two-hit wonder.

Wow! What an amazing film! Absolutely top notch. What surprises me though is that not only did it not make much money at the box office, but it wasn't even nominated for any Golden Globe awards. Maybe I am missing something? I really hope it gets some recognition at the Academy Awards because it definitely deserves it. The acting by all was great. The writing was suspenseful, thrilling, interesting, and socially relevant to many contemporary issues. For me though, I absolutely loved the direction and cinematography, in particular to two scenes (the ambush in the forest and the battle in Bexhill). I just found the way that the camera followed around the action, and the way it was all portrayed was technically genius. I've always loved Shayamalan's usage of extended takes on a shot, but he really needs to take page out of Cuaron's book, because this movie blows anything M. Night has ever done. Well done!

I loved the first Saw (9/10). Saw II (5/10) was quite a disappointment, but honestly, I didn't really expect that much, as I knew they were not going to build upon or go in a new direction with a sequel, and that it would be just a rehash of old ideas. Saw III is pretty much the same as II. Nothing new added, same old territory.

Although this one I found was worse that II. Mostly because half of the movie was in flashbacks, which really didn't add anything to the current plot or do much for character development of Jigsaw and his apprentice. It was just filler because the writer/director had such a weak story and didn't know what else to do.

Also Charlie Clouser, the composer, created an excellent piece of music at the end of Saw 1, and unfortunately he knows it, because he uses it over and over again in this film. It was great the first time, but, it gets tiring hearing it over and over again.

Finally, I also found the quality of acting, writing, directing, also quite shabby, when compared to the other two films. At least though, we did have a strong ending, but again, one that was totally predictable (unlike the great unpredictable ending of Saw 1).