1. I saw two previews for the movie. The first was about 6 months ago and it didn't give me much about the movie. It had beautiful music and a janitor-type character staring into a pool whispering "How many of you are there?" The second preview I saw, which was a bit more recent, seemed to say that the characters weren't sure if the lady in the water was evil or good. Neither preview really had much bearing on the story itself, once I watched the movie... which makes sense since the story went in about 16 different directions.
2. Like me, Shyamalan didn't seem to know where the story was going. This could be because the story line was based on a bedtime story the director used to tell his kids. It definitely resembled a story that was told many different ways and then was made into a movie that incorporated all of its ideas (even though some of them contradicted each other). It might have been better as a bedtime story. I won't say it wasn't suspenseful. But every time you are ready for some amazing twist it just ends up that the bumbling characters in the movie don't really know what they're doing. The suspense wasn't as satisfying as I would have hoped. As much as people hated The Village, I liked it better than this film because it stayed with one basic plot instead of straying all over the place.
3. I enjoyed the anti-war theme and the legend aspect of the movie. It was a clever and moving fairy tale anyone would be enchanted by. The story itself didn't come together entirely... but that's just the writer in me talking. I did love the combination of the legend and the problems in our world today. It was Shyamalan's way of making sense of today by looking at the stories of the past.
4. The part in the end when the monkey creatures finally attack and kill the skrip was a bit too Steven Spielberg for me. Even the music was cheesy at that point, which is saying something because overall I loved the soundtrack.
5. The movie was a little ambitious. The legend of the ladies in the water trying to connect with man and stop the wars on earth was there, but the idea that the writer would see the lady and write a book that a little boy would read and grow up to become president and change the world was a stretch. The movie could've been 6 hours long and probably should have to accomplish all of that. That said, I wanted more at the end. I wanted to see the apartment complex janitor go back to the medical world where he belonged, and I wanted to see the little boy grow up and change the world. I left a gigantic feast starving for something more.
6. Why didn't anyone question the fact that none of this could ever happen in reality? I like putting the supernatural in a real, logical setting, but it was as if the characters in the movie had this kind of thing happen to them every day. On the other hand, all of the characters were strange people, which made their blind belief in the supernatural a little more believable. Shyamalan also explained their simple faith in the legend. Those who were supposed to help the lady in the water would be drawn to one place... so they were somewhat prepared to have something strange occur.
7. As I'm sitting here criticising the movie, I think about the one character who dies in the film; the movie critic. He is the arrogant pessimistic new guy in the building and is painted as the only one who could never believe in such nonsense. This annoyed me... not because I'm doing what Shyamalan obviously hates and picking apart his movie, but because as a writer I don't like when directors or writers shove their own petty aggravations into what could be a beautiful story. Yes, there is such a thing as authorial self-reflexivity, but this was too much. It was distracting and reminded me that the fairy tale was just made up by someone. It was a lapse in the suspension of disbelief.
8. I love Shyamalan's camera angles!!! It's amazing what he chooses to focus on and I could watch this movie again and again to see what he meant by each of them.
9. As a writer, the apparent lack of revision frustrated me. There are a few stories I've told and re-told over the years that have different spins or different endings, but if I ever recorded them they'd be a convuluted mess of different details. That's much of what this movie amounted to to me. The two very different previews show that Shyamalan spent time deciding which details to leave out and which direction the story should follow. I think he should've spent more time. It's too bad it's too late to edit it now.
10. My ranking of the Shyamalan movies I've seen (from best to worst):
The Sixth Sense, The Village, Lady in the Water, Signs
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