SCI FI PI

Released June 12
Director M.Night Shyamalan
Starring Mark Whalberg, John Leguizamo, Zooey Deschanel
Rated MA





This film is fascinating. Not entirely successful, to say the least, but fascinating in many ways. Is it M.Night Shyamalan's final filmic coffin nail? Not quite. Will people spit out out their soft drink in disbelief at what they're seeing on screen? Quite possibly. For Shyamalan has reached out boldly, and perhaps has crossed too many lines for the discerning audience to forgive him.

That said, he hasn't made this about himself, nor has he added a ridiculous twist at the end, so the two chief horrors in heading off to this film have been assuaged. But what's it all about?

Essentially, this is a greenie pic with a vengeance. Strange events in New York City seem to point to a terrorist attack, but it soon becomes clear that it is a 'natural' event. Trees are responding to predators by exuding a chemical. The predators - us. If this sounds far fetched, some of the details are, but anyone will tell you that the broad strokes of science behind the film's concept are 100% correct. Which is really cool and really disturbing.

It starts off well. Undeniably, the scenes where people stop what they are doing, start mumbling mumbo jumbo, walk backwards or just stand still - and then start killing themselves, is disturbing, to say the least.

What's really fascinating about these early sequences (and later ones) is that Shyamalan doesn't turn away from the gorier aspects of suicide. In fact, he seems to relish it, which is great for gore-hounds, but something of a speedhump when placed against the 'this is a smart horror/thriller' tone set by actors who have been told to 'quiet it down' in their performances.





The speaking style of Mark Wahlberg is almost identical to that of Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, a very distinctive Shyamalan film trait. The assured yet uncomprehending delivery of a parent figure who must know the answers but doesn't.

The irony is that whilst this sounds all clever and such, the film lacks some basic connections between the emotional journey of the film and its characters and the audience. A good film will anticipate the thought process of the audience, lead them and then either shock them with a twist or console them with the expected.

Shyamalan's often clumsy dialogue and structure mean that the audience is ahead of the characters, waiting for them to catch up. The final half of the film is merely a series of events without meaning, thus rendering the excellent set up useless.

The film is ostensibly about what happens 'when plants attack', but the problem is that what it should have been about is the thin line between humanity's sense of self preservation and its predeliction for destruction. That is the true heart of the film - the forest here is obscured, if you'll pardon the pun, by its trees.

It's a tragic end. Obviously the concept behind the film took over the script and took the story away from the people in it. Hopefully Shyamalan will in future combine his relish for high concept and filmic grammar with a more thorough understanding of an audience,s response - when he does, the results will be even more satisfying than The Sixth Sense.