LADY IN THE WATER(2006). Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Cast: Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jeffrey Wright, Bob Balaban, Sarita Choudhury, Cindy Cheung, M. Night Shyamalan, Freddy Rodriguez, Bill Irwin, Mary Beth Hurt.

All mysterious chick in the pool has to do to accomplish her mission is look at an aspiring writer (played by Shyamalan himself) for a few seconds, which somehow imbues him with the inspiration he needs to finish his inspirational book, which will inspire future generations to heights of inspired inspiration. For such a big goal, it is achieved with surprising ease – which means the story is essentially over halfway through the running time. Consequently, the rest of the movie is devoted to trying to get the Lady in the Water back home (kind of like E.T.), but there’s some big wolfish creature lurking in the lawn, preventing her return. (The monster looks as if it is made of grass, but no one ever considers simply using a lawnmower on it.)

The lawn monster is what development executives and literature professors like to call a “plot complication.” The characters in LADY IN THE WATER might or might not use the term, but they do talk about storytelling conventions quite a bit. Having decided that they are “in” some kind of children’s tale, they begin to make all the decisions based on this assumption. The film starts to feel like the cinematic equivalent of a John Barth story (for example, “Lost in the Funhouse”), enumerating its own narrative devices even while exploiting them.

Unfortunately, unlike Barth, Shyamalan is not using this post-modern technique as a way of spoofing his reliance on hoary genre conventions. Instead, he means to extol the virtues of his own storytelling as something classic and unassailable, despite its simple-minded naiveté, which the audience is supposed to embrace with the unquestioning love of a child, whether or not it is worthy of adoration.

The point is made most clearly through Shyamalan’s treatment of the only unsympathetic character, a film critic (played by Bob Balaban), who also becomes the monster’s only victim. Even granting Shyamalan permission to indulge in this kind of petty revenge fantasy, the use of the critic in the plot is badly bungled. The film’s central character, Cleveland Hemp (Paul Giametti) goes to the critic for advice, since a critic should know all about storytelling. The critic gives Cleveland what is actually (although the film never acknowledges it) perfectly good advice – which Cleveland then misinterprets with disastrous results. Instead of blaming Cleveland, the film blames the critic, dismissing him as “arrogant” for thinking he knew what he was talking about. And then the monster eats him.

In effect, Shyamalan is saying that only cynical self-absorbed critics refuse to surrender to the wonder and imagination of his movies; therefore, they should be viciously eviscerated as punishment for not acknowledging his genius. This is a sentiment worthy of hacks like Rolland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, who pilloried Roger Ebert in GODZILLA (1998), because the critic dissed their INDEPENDENCE DAY.

As if all this were not enough, LADY IN THE WATER is, ultimately, a giant masturbation fantasy for Shyamalan, who casts himself as the man whose writing will change the world for the better. Not only that, he’s made out to be a martyr, to boot!

As a horror story, LADY IN THE WATER is half-hearted at best, its monster little more than a dramatic device. As a fairy tale, it fares little better, insisting that we somehow owe it to Shyamalan to accept his imaginary world, whether or not he works hard to convince us to believe in it. As with THE VILLAGE (and to some extent, SIGNS), Shyamalan uses an isolated setting (in this case, an apartment complex) as a microcosm of the world. But he never invests this self-contained world (the film never ventures outside the complex) with the magic it needs to support a story about a mermaid-like creature secretly ensconced in a swimming pool.

In fact, almost the only convincing element is Paul Giamatti’s performance. The actor must be some kind of certified genius: he almost single-handedly holds audience attention through the film; even when it’s at its most absurd, he manages to play a character, not just a walking mouth-piece for Shyamalan’s self-serving dialogue.

LADY IN THE WATER might have worked if it had been shot in traditional cell animation and/or featured a cast of children (making it easier to accept they would believe the fairy tale elements without question). But as an adult drama, it’s a mess. Perhaps the film’s biggest failing is that, unlike THE SIXTH SENSE, Shyamalan fails to create a believable reality into which the supernatural elements intrude; this lack of believability undermines the horror, which works only on a simple jump-and-scream basis, instead of the uncanny frisson of SIXTH SENSE.

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