Lady In The Water (Sell Through) (DVD) (DVD)

Lonely apartment caretaker Cleveland Heep discovers a mysterious girl in the building's swimming pool. The girl is Story, a water nymph from the Blue World come to ours to awaken man to the truth. But something has followed her and that something is determined to stop her from returning to her own world and to kill anyone that gets in its way. Cleveland and his neighbours do their best to protect her, putting their own lives at risk.

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...line of increasingly disappointing films from writer-director M Night Shyamalan. You know you're in trouble when the film starts with an overly serious voice-over narration that accompanies a sober black and white chalkboard animation. That the cartoon relates an interminably convoluted creation myth gives you some idea of what is to come. The movie appears to be suffering from an identity crisis - unable to decide whether it is a fantasy, horror ... more

Lonely apartment caretaker Cleveland Heep discovers a mysterious girl in the building's swimming pool. The girl is Story, a water nymph from the Blue World come to ours to awaken man to the truth. But something has followed her and that something is determined to stop her from returning to her own world and to kill anyone that gets in its way. Cleveland and his neighbours do their best to protect her, putting their own lives at risk.

"Lady in the Water" is the latest in a long line of increasingly disappointing films from writer-director M Night Shyamalan. You know you're in trouble when the film starts with an overly serious voice-over narration that accompanies a sober black and white chalkboard animation. That the cartoon relates an interminably convoluted creation myth gives you some idea of what is to come. The movie appears to be suffering from an identity crisis - unable to decide whether it is a fantasy, horror or character study. As a result, the characters feel unreal and the light comedy jars with the horror aspects, which just aren't frightening enough. I get the impression that M Night Shyamalan has a subconscious fear of hedgehogs. That would certainly explain why all the monsters in his movies are so spiky and benign. And when it comes to the beasts lurking in the shadows, Shyamalan shows too much too early, losing any sense of fear surrounding them. This is especially true as the monster effects are of poor quality. His visual style continues in the same autumnal palette as his previous pictures, making this yet another odd choice for a summer release. Short of a few sudden noises there is little here that will make you jump and the tension leeches out of each scene as more and more sub-plots pile up. There is no strong through line and you always feel as if you're stuck in a dizzying whirl of stories, none of which are really connected. It's a flush of magical realism that fails because it is incoherent.

The director doesn't seem to have any personal bond with his characters, treating each as either a concept or a mythical archetype and making it exceedingly difficult to empathise with any of them. He wastes the potential of a talented cast by side-lining many of them in thankless bit-parts while he enjoys centre-stage. It is the ultimate in directorial narcissism to cast oneself in a key role, as a man whose writing will one day change the world. He also gives in to film school excess when characters start talking directly to camera and his taste for tension-popping humour drains the last dregs of fear from the film. This is the worst of his self-indulgence, which is only added to by his penchant for excruciatingly pseudo-meaningful pauses. Had he cut some of them out, it might have shaved a few minutes off the ponderous running time of an hour and forty-nine minutes.

Shyamalan's self-penned script is a confusing jumble of half-baked ideas and bizarre subplots. Despite setting the story in the real world, he tries too hard to make it quirky. So the apartment complex is inhabited by a series of cartoonish oddballs that have little connection to reality. Some, like the bickering Korean mother and daughter are gross ethnic stereotypes, some freakish (the man building up only one arm or the man who sits watching the news all day) while others, like the pot-smoking guru and his acolytes, seem to have been drafted in from another movie (presumably "Cheech and Chong"). The people appear even more unreal because they are too credulous; they take little or no convincing of Story's existence. And they all band together without question to save her.

The narrative lacks cohesion, playing like a series of random episodes rather than a single plot. Instead of leaving Cleveland or Story as the main narrator, Shyamalan insists on drawing more characters into the story-telling without good reason. So Cleveland has to learn the story of the water nymphs through the Korean mother, establish possible similarities between character types from the film critic and gain prophetic pointers from a boy that can interpret messages on cereal boxes. That's one of the most frustrating aspects of the movie; everything is done in a roundabout manner. If only the writer would get to the point instead of filtering information through several characters, the pacing would be sharper. The dialogue shoots itself in the foot by trying to be clever and the sheer implausibility of lines makes them laughable ("He's hearing the voice of God through a crossword puzzle."), especially as they are said without a hint of irony. Shyamalan muddies the waters even further by introducing a stream of vocabulary that is both confusing and unnecessary.

I really like Paul Giamatti - I think he's a wonderful character actor with great range and depth. However, as Cleveland Heep, I feel he's short-changed by a script that paints him as little more than a two-dimensional sad-sack with unresolved issues. I think Shyamalan's direction has also led him up the garden path, requiring him to flip-flop between stuttering introversion and virtual slapstick. His bizarre man-child performance is one of the strangest and most disturbing things I've seen at the cinema all year. Though Giamatti tries his best with limited material, ultimately he can't rise above the appalling writing.

Bryce Dallas Howard is in many ways ideally cast as water nymph Story. There is something otherworldly about her that means she is able to set herself apart from the other players. This gives her performance a watchful quality that is very appropriate to Story's status as an outsider. But she counters his with a childlike directness that she perfected in "The Village". It's a decent turn, but one that is again hampered by the script.

Bob Balaban is another reliable character actor who brings some much-needed scepticism to the film. As the nasty film critic, he brings a wry sense of the film's worth as disposable entertainment. His delivery is bone-dry and his superciliousness entirely fitting. He even does well with direct address to camera, despite the trite nature of the device. It's a shame we don't see more of him. Jeffrey Wright is totally wasted as puzzle-solver Mr Dury, barely given five minutes of screen-time in a clumsily symbolic role, whose significance is clear from the outset. It's such a shame Shyamalan gets so much screen-time. As an actor, he makes a great director. Surita Choudhury, who plays his sister is far more sympathetic and realistic, bringing real warmth to an otherwise cold fish of a movie.

James Newton Howard's score owes more to Danny Elfman than his own back-catalogue. The majority of pieces are string-based. He opens with an ethereal chorus and music box chimes, backed by rising strings and solo piano. But this is about as complex as it gets, relying heavily on maudlin woodwinds to convey sadness, wistful flutes for hope, tense strings for fear and discordant piano for terror. It's very literal in its approach and lacks originality. But at least it's less overbearing than Howard's usual stuff.

The special effects throughout the movie are anything but. The monsters are a mix of animatronics and computer-generated creatures that simply aren't horrifying enough. They don't have enough weight or consistency on the way they move, so it never feels like they are in the same place as the actors or that the humans are being menaced by them.

"Lady in the Water" is a perplexing film that is so full of plot-holes and tangents that you will be left scratching your head, wondering what it was all about, come the end credits. It is never scary enough to be a horror movie, nor sweet enough to be a fantasy, the characters lack depth and while the main performances are technically strong, they lack heart. This is a soulless movie that fails because it cannot decide what it is. 

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