and was mildly tempted but I've heard nowt but bad things
spent the night looking at movie posters on cracked.com and it cropped up once or twice

kinda says what I expected about the movie, I'm still baffled by Inception anyway

but have been watching Shutter Island on DVD instead. Seriously freaking me out; nothing to do with the lunatics, I should point out - it's Ben bloody Kingsley giving me the willies.

This film is much maligned to such an extent that it is potentially in the running for the biggest turkey of the decade. It was laughed at, mocked, ridiculed etc for being a misconceived dud of notable proportions.

So when it turned up on TV I had to see it for myself, along with someone else so we could laugh at it together. Sadly the film did not live up to expectations. It's poor but it wasn't laughable (although I can easily imagine the mob mentality of a full cinema turning vocally against the film). Even the most famous moment of stupidity, when Mark Wahlberg talks to a pot plant, was reasonable and fine. I thought the moment worked and the realisation that it was made of rubber was mildly amusing.

The first half hour was okay, just a bit stiff and stilted. It was oddly undramatic and rather low key, as though the stakes weren't all that high. There's a curious lack of hysterics among the endangered crowds. Everyone, with a few mild exceptions, seems to stay calm and polite. This gives the film a strange tone that doesn't feel right to me.

It remained okay until they leave the roads and start walking through the fields. It then started to become silly. If this was a low budget straight to rental B-movie then it probably wouldn't come across that badly. As it's a well financed A-picture, with some famous actors, it looked a bit stupid to see groups of people terrified and running away from some wind in the trees.

It's silly but watchable enough (the lawn-mower death scene is the single most silly part of the film) until they come to a house with an isolated old woman. From here it just becomes pointless and drab. The film wastes some time and then climaxes with a deeply undramatic ending that is almost stunning in its banality. Overall a feeling of pointlessness hangs over the film due to this anti-climax.

A large problem with the film is M Night Shyamalan's direction. He clearly meticulously storyboards his set piece sequences and gives very specific directions to the actors. This gives the film a stiff, stilted and dated feeling. The camera work is often flat and uninspired, and the editing rather slow and ponderous for a modern film. The actors all give strange performances without an ounce of naturalism. The film feels dated to the 1950s. Remove the modern technology like mobile phones, give the colours that garish Technicolor sheen and it could pass as a film from that era (also the violence and language is so restrained that it feels like it had to pass through censors from the 50s).

The film it most reminds me of is The Birds from 1963, complete with a similarly disappointing non-ending. In some peoples opinion comparing this to The Birds is high praise. I don't think it is. It's also worth noting that Alfred Hitchcock, a director who's style and technique was shaped in the 40s and 50s, might have been one of the greats, but his films are dated and very much of their time (compare Family Plot from 1976 to even a film five years before it like The French Connection).

Overall it was a poor film with a dated visual style and theatrically mannered acting throughout. Although not the mega-turkey I was expecting, and in my opinion it's not laugh out loud bad, it was pretty silly. Instead it was just a run of the mill bad film. It's perhaps best thought of as a disaster movie for preteen kids.

3 out of 10