If I was the daughter of M. Night Shyamalan, I’m not sure I would want to tread in the same waters. I feel like the bar is so high, that even if you are able to out direct your father’s most incompetent directing for films like The Last Airbender and After Earth, you would still have a hard time beating his older works like The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, or Signs, or even the more recent Split. Yet, that’s what we have here. We have someone trying to father in the closest footsteps possible.
Dakota Fanning plays a young woman who wanders from the main road into a clearing, with a glass house, and basically gets stuck there after finding out that the current residents live in the glass house in some trapped scenario, as they are watched at night by… something. If she tries to head back,she is likely to have something happen to her, though most of this is really just speculation.
Like the films of M. Night Shyamalan, you are expected to take the rules of the movie at face value. Cole can see dead people in The Sixth Sense. Don’t argue it. James McAvoy has a split personality that allows him to climb on walls and ceilings. Just accept it. Here, you have to accept that there’s this glass house, there are watchers, and Dakota Fanning needs to figure out something better than just walking away from crazy town.
I think the direction is fine, as this would pass for a mediocre daddy Shyamalan project, and I enjoyed it more than a handful of his films. I wouldn’t have shown or revealed as much as they do as soon as they do. Part of what makes this movie work so well is the blind faith that there is something out there, even if they can’t see it. Even if they don’t interact with it. The acting from the three already inside the house is convincing enough.
I know it is based on a book, and I haven’t checked out that book, but i would have gone with the less is more route. Maybe danger really is at their door, or maybe it isn’t. But the film is most compelling when you don’t know the answer to that question, and then later just becomes a run of the mill survival film once you do.In the year of Shyamalan, where he is directing Trapped, which has his other daughter in it, and another child is directing in the same year, it does feel like we’re having a renaissance. However, this feels more like mid-level, like The Village, and less like The Sixth Sense, even though both have twists, and require you to just believe for at least part of the film.
The audio description was fine, at least from my being able to follow the film. I’m assuming I got as much described to me as was shown. If not, then my opinion would change, but the description and imagery worked. the film just has a tendency to not know where to stop, and just keeps over revealing more and more when less would have been a stronger and bolder choice. I almost wish this had been a micro budget film, forcing them to really narrow it down to the basics. There’s a better movie in here, the question is can anyone named Shyamalan find it?
Final Grade: C