First and foremost — creepy. Extremely so. Shyamalan excels when it comes to creating unsettling moods, and he uses that to full effect throughout the movie. Unfortunately, after ninety minutes of buildup, the end is something of a letdown — a bit too pat and sudden after all that suspense, not to mention an extremely heavy dose of ‘deus ex machina‘. I was reminded both of Chrichton’s ‘Andromeda Strain’ and many Heinlein novels — page turners ’til the very end, when everything just suddenly stops. Quite unsatisfying.
Having watched all three of Shyamalan’s films now (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs), I think he’s an excellent director, and a very gifted conceptualizer, but I also think he could benefit from turning over his ideas to a more accomplished writer. While I’ve enjoyed each of his films, I’ve also found each of them somewhat lacking. The Sixth Sense was very much a one-trick pony (worth watching only twice: once to be surprised by the twist end, and again to catch all the clues you missed the first time), Unbreakable was an interesting idea but was too distant and cold in its execution to really grab me, and Signs topped off an atmosphere of tension and suspense that many horror movies could really use with a letdown of a resolution.