A review of "Lady in the Water" — 3 years ago
Personally, I think this is one of M. Night Shayamalan’s finest work to date. I think a lot of people have misjudged this movie’s intent, and I think most of the same people hated The Village because it wasn’t a horror movie but rather a story about the good intentions of a group of people with utopian ideals who try to overcome human nature only to find that it simply isn’t possible. I do not by any means claim to understand exactly what its messages are, but I do think that if you go into this movie with the superficial expectations for it to be another box office hit thriller in the vein of The Sixth Sense (which I think is one of the best of that genre) then you will very likely be disappointed. I found this movie to be a very intricately woven and very emotionally charged story about the mundanity of life as opposed to the magic of stories, and how blurred the distinction between the two can be if you’re willing to let it. The characters are very real people; they are unorganized, incompetant, ordinary and not particularly attractive, but by the end of the movie you somehow feel as if there is some cohesive force that connects the most random people and that each one of them has played a part in something more important. The performances were incredibly visceral and just brilliant. It’s also really quite amazingly shot, especially if you pay attention to how a scene can suddenly become chilling with just a few subtle changes. I didn’t expect a lot from this movie, but was definitely pleasantly surprised, and I can’t think of any other film that has made the possibility of magical occurrances in real life seem more feasible.
