M. Nights next film "Lady in the Water' (1 Viewer)

[Mikah Cerucco]

John, new movies come out all the time. I'm not sure how often you go, but what would it take for you to simply skip a MNS movie and go see something else?

I really liked The Sixth Sense. I really looked forward to Unbreakable based on my love of The Sixth Sense, but I didn't like it as much. That was my caution point. I didn't go see Signs in the theater, though I did watch it on DVD. I was glad I waited for the DVD. The Village was a complete letdown for me, though I suspected it'd be so and didn't go see it in the theater. I have no intention of going to see LITW unless I learn from reviews and threads like this one that it is better than I'm expecting.

If you feel compelled to go see it, maybe MNS's movies are working better for you than you realize. After all, there's many others you could go see.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Mikah, it's not that I didn't enjoy a majority of his films, loved The Sixth Sense, liked Unbreakable, loved Signs but utterly despised The Village. My apprehension comes from reading so mch about MNS and how often he gets compared to Hitchcock, I got the sense with The Village that he was starting to believe his press and that he was sort of becoming a bit pretentious.

That may have been a knee-jerk reaction to my hatred of that film and I may have been wrong about Knight, but it's something about the way he spins things in his films and the way he markets them that really disturbs me on some level that I can't fully articulate.

He's a very strange man and his films are, in turn, very strange as well, but, that's not necessarily bad. He's a great director, he's just, well, weird.

 

[DavidPla]

Ah, Robert Zemeckis!!

 

[Lou Sytsma]

ComingSoon gives it a 8/10 - http://comingsoon.net/news/reviewsnews.php?id=15352

 

[Holadem]

I am puzzled by the claims of dubious marketing of MNS's films.

Outside of making the movies looks more kinetic than they actually are (a standard Hollywood practice), I just don't see it:

Sixth Sense - Extremely succesful marketing which can be summed up by the now iconic phrase "I see dead people". The premise of the film was very clearly conveyed by the trailer.

Unbreakable - Again, the premise was clear: Guy walks out of a deadly catastrophe without a scratch... Intriguing, makes you want to know more.

Signs - Crop signs, aliens invasion. Short of giving away the ending, I am not sure how you would have marketed this one. Save for the last 5 minutes, the movie was about an alien invasion.

The Village - I don't really remember the trailers to be honest (I pprobably avoided them on purpose), but it was common knowledge that the film dealt with a village surrounded by mythical monsters.

So where is the shady marketing?

--
H

 

[Zen Butler]

Yeah, even as an MNS critic; I felt all the trailers were spot on. Intriguing to say the least.

 

[DavidPla]

I think it's only really the trailer for "The Village" that pissed people off. The trailers made people expect scary monsters attacking the village ala. Signs with aliens attacking the farmhouse and that wasn't what the film was about at all.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Your damn skippy I was.

The ads for 'TV' were enough to make me pause when trying to accurately evaluate his films from that point on, I just plain don't trust him when it comes to advertising his films.

The Lady in the Water sure APPEARS to be a scary movie, but with M. Night, that could be misleading.

I'll find out when I see it.

 

[Josh.C]

I'll say this about Night's films. I always come out of them saying "I didn't have any clue it was going to be about that". I never know what to expect going in, which is sometimes a good thing (I might be the only person on the forum that enjoyed the Village), and could be a bad thing. We will see w/ Lady in the Water. The preview I saw at the movie's showed a much scarrier movie than the commercial trailers I've seen.

JC

 

[DavidJ]

You are not alone Josh.

 

[Greg.K]

I liked The Village also. More than Signs, for sure.

 

[BrettGallman]

If I had to rank his films, I'd go:

Unbreakable
Signs
The Village
Sixth Sense

That said, it really depends on what kind of mood I'm in. I am comfortable in saying that Unbreakable is my definate favorite though.

I'm excited for Lady in the Water, but The Village (and the marketing) really have me wary that there's something more than meets the eye. I wasn't upset with the turn of events in The Village (and even called it about 1/4 of the way through the movie), so I'm still eager to see M. Night's next offering.

 

[Greg_S_H]

Heh. I avoided the Village, but now the idea that it has an anger-inducing twist makes me curious.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I should also mention that I don't mind when a film turns out different than it's trailers and tv spots, contrary to what I may have led you to believe with my rantings.

But when the "twist" turns out to be as lame as it was in 'TV', it completely lets the air out of my sail and makes me feel like I just wasted 2 hrs of my life for nothing more than a cruel joke.

"There never was any creatures..."

What a crock of shit lol.

 

[BrettGallman]

Well, technically John, you could say that there were metaphorical monsters represented by the outside world,
which I think is what M. Night was going for. A bit of a stretch, but it works for me.

 

[dpippel]

I'm hopeful that Lady In The Water will turn out better. Paul Giamatti is da man.

 

[Pete-D]

I think "The Village" was probably one of those things that sounds better on paper than it works in execution.

It'd be a great 30-minute Twilight Zone episode ... but it doesn't hold together as well as a 2 hour motion picture.

Which is maybe the thing -- M. Night needs to move beyond the Twilight Zone formula. I'm interested to see if "Lady In The Water" can do that. M. Night's strength is he has a way of taking ideas and framing them in a very compelling/interesting way ... something a lot of writers/directors cannot do. He'll do an alien or superhero or ghost story in a way that's totally different and bring themes/ideas/relationships into those films in a great manner.

He's a good storyteller, he shouldn't be afraid to move beyond "The Sixth Sense" type of sombre style + twist ending type of thing.

 

[mattCR]

Yeah, if he wanted it to play as though they were totally removed from humanity, it would have worked out better if

they were in nowhere Montana or Uruguay or somewhere where they could wander off for miles and miles or they would never even have the possibility of seeing a plane fly overhead

 

[Pete-D]

Thing is though isn't it explained in the movie that there is a no-fly zone over the "village"?

Even if a plane accidentally flew over the sky, from the P.O.V. of a villager, it would be what a U.F.O. is to a person in a big city. They would have no context or idea of what they're looking at and would probably think it was some kind of mystical/unexplained phenomenon.

Stuff like that didn't really bother me about "The Village". I just didn't think as a whole it was compelling of a core idea as "The Sixth Sense", "Unbreakable", or even "Signs" are.

I was watching Unbreakable again on TV last night, and I have to admit, there are aspects of the story which are pretty brilliant .... the whole thing about a "real" superhero and the way they used his Security jacket as a "costume" and what not, the way all that came together ... great stuff.

 

[DaveB]

Currently, I rank the 4 big M. Knight films as follows:

1 - Signs
2 - Unbreakable
3 - The Village
4 - Sixth Sense

These are well-loved films in my household, and I love M. Knight as a filmmaker, but don't appreciate the comparisons to Hitchcock.