Lady in the Water (2006)

Every writer finds themselves dreaming they can change the world with their pen, but 99% of the time, you've failed the second you try. Something changes. Your subject, your approach, your execution, and your attitude all become inescapably stupid. What could be worse than that? When you know you should know better, so you obscure your intentions a little bit, not enough to fog up your message, but enough to show people you're a little humble. Gosh! Look at you. You can be simple, just like the crowd!

This movie is about a landlord named Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti) who is visited by a lady from the pool named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard). Story comes from the Blue World, which is in jeopardy or something, probably because the Blue World is Shyamalan's surrogate for his own creativity, or maybe it isn't really in jeopardy at all... it's hard to tell, but creatures want to kill Story and we're upset because she's the story. Story has come to inspire someone from our reality to write the next great work of art that will inspire someone else to become president and change the world, and together with a building full of archetypes, it's up to Cleveland to protect her until she succeeds.

Will she survive? Do you care? With its endlessly petulant self-reference (monsters want to kill the story!), the single movie with which Lady in the Water has the most in common is I Really Hate My Job. Worse, the single filmmaker with which this version of M. Night Shyamalan has most in common is Tyler Perry. They both fancy themselves knowing better than you, and so structure their bad films around lessons, so that not only are they teaching you to be a better person, you should also be grateful the medicine goes down easy. It's such a nauseating abuse of power, it's no wonder that anyone with a brain immediately hates it.

There are useless fantasy creatures that are introduced ("narfs," "scrunts," "tartutics"), useless sources for its own mythology (a dotty old Korean woman, via a Korean giantess), and useless right-angle turns in the narrative, including a fakeout as to who will change the world, and a fakeout as to who the great writer is (hint: it's Shyamalan). It's no surprise that the pieces never come together: the pieces are made of bullshit.

Shyamalan is a filmmaker acutely aware that he is gifted, but here, incredibly mistaken as to what those gifts are. He is an expert at summoning feeling out of the creepy, and when you're in Shyamalan's world, this might as well cover the entire spectrum of the human condition. His films are so rich, it is evident that he can tackle many genres besides the few he gives himself. But he is mistaken to think audiences want to look at any old thing bouncing around in his head. They don't.

Here's the problem: Story, Cleveland, and everyone else are too idiosyncratic to Shyamalan to be useful to anyone else. They're momentary fizzles every writer has all the time.

When you want to change the world, it helps to bring people onto your side of the pen.