Lady in the Water

M Night Shyamalan films have always garnered a lot of expectation ever since Sixth Sense stunned audiences with ‘that twist’. Every time a new film is delivered by the writer / director it inevitably gets a lot of gripes and moans. Usually this is along the lines of “the twist was rubbish”, or “compared to Sixth Sense….”

Well, this time the moaners are out in force….only this time there is no twist! Most critics have already got the knives out for M Night, and here is their chance to leap because The Lady In The Water is not the film they are expecting! I could go on a diatribe about how Sixth Sense is a bit rubbish once you know the twist (some scenes make no sense at all from a story point of view and only work because of cinematic expectations), but that is another tale for another day (and perhaps a rant). But, no, this is a review for Lady in the Water, and so let me begin afresh…

Paul Giamatti plays a caretaker in a block of appartments, which are populated by a varying degree of strange folks. There is the guy who is bulking up only one side of his body, the group of ‘artful thinkers’, the quiet man who sits all day, the bizarre oriental student and her feuding mother, the puzzle solver, and various others. Into this bewildering fortress arrives a mystery in the form of a young girl who comes from the swimming pool (a short pre-credit tale tells us of the people from the water and how they are trying to contact us). Giamatti discovers, via the oriental woman, that she is a mystical creature and he must help her find her contact so she can be taken away by the giant eagle. However, a creature of the earth, which takes the form of a wolf, is waiting in the grass to attack her before she can complete her task.

Okay…got that? In case you couldn’t tell by this point, Lady in the Water is based on a bedtime story M Night told his kids, and hence the ‘fairy tale’ aspect of the story, and the low (PG) rating the film has been granted. This very fact alone will alienate some of the audience who don’t like kids films.

The film is not as bad a film as many would have you believe – however it could have been so much better. There are flaws that really jar against the flow of the story, and there are too many characters involved to really care about any of them. Most serious flaw is in one character, a snobby film critic, who seems to be in the film purely to point out that “if critics don’t like this film then it is because they forgot how to enjoy films years ago so don’t listen to them” and “if any adults don’t like this it is because they forget how to be a kid”. Any film that feels it has to tell you how old you have to be to enjoy it is treading uneasy ground.

With a bit of editing this could have been an excellent film. The mythology of the creatures seems interesting, but underplayed. The cast are, in general, likeable, with Giamatti being on excellent form once more. Bryce Dallas Howard (as the mysterious girl from the water) is perfectly cast, her mysterious unconventional beauty adding to the mysteriousness of her character. Direction from M Night is as strong as ever, with a few great ‘jump’ moments, and elements of Hitchcockian suspense thrown in. Music complements, rather than controls the proceedings. All in all there is a fantastic film in here….somewhere. However the flaws do disrupt the flow too much, and work against the fabric of the tale.

A shame really.