Lady in the Water

February 06, 2007

No Spoilers! It is my promise to you, but with an M. Night Shyamalan movie it is hard!

Lady in the Water (2006) by M. Night Shyamalan is a movie that I have been looking forward to seeing ever since I heard about it. The director of the Sixth Sense is considered by many to be a one trick pony with his: get ready there is a twist at the end. Ever since Unbreakable his fans have wavered. I have appreciated all his films and what he tries to accomplish. M. Night is clearly someone who loves movies and loves making them.

I will admit that when the Village came out I watched the entire film trying to figure out his twist ending. By the flash back sequence: here are all things you missed momments, I had four different scenarios on how the movie would end. But one thing lead me to the conclusion that was the same as the Villages ending, it was, Wait hes has to put himself into the movie somewhere so naturally the Village will end this way. Now with Lady in the Water, M. Night is in his film again. It is distracting for me to watch because I know he is the director and I am taken out of my suspension of disbelief. It might not be like this for everyone, but it is distracting for me.

Let's get on to the movie, Lady in the Water is actually not your typical M. Night movie. Apparently he sat down, watched his own movies and listened to some people complain about their predictability. So the actual twist this time is you are not watching your typical M. Night movie.

The story is clearly a bed time story for children but it is a movie more for adults. It deals heavily with believing in something more than what we as adults have accepted as the real world. Can we as adults believe in fairy tales? Can we still see the world with the eyes of child? Do happy endings exist? M. Night asks these questions throughout the movie.

Now the only place, I thought, that the movie did faultier was its length. It is not a long movie, mind you. But this is a bed time story, those are, as I remember, less than 30 minutes. Imagine you are watching Hansel and Gretel: the movie. That story is pretty much said and done in less than thirty minutes. Now make it a feature length film. You have to put it a few twists and turns to make it longer. That is what M. Night did with his bed time story, he dragged it out. There where times I felt like we were going over the same ground.

Click here to read the staff review by Mania.