If you watch Lady in the Water, I don’t think you’ll get the feeling that Shyamalan loves his craft. He just loves that he made it.

| Jun 17, 2024

Nothing works in this film; it’s boring and incomprehensible, laughable when it should be inspiring.

| May 25, 2022

Shyamalan proves once again to be a filmmaker who knows how to take advantage of some highly ridiculous scenarios and situations. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Apr 16, 2020

Still, the multicultural cast is fun, the images have a painterly beauty and there are some beguiling comic touches before the story sinks into a swamp of solemn metaphysical glop.

| Feb 6, 2018

Peevishly defensive, intransigently personal and serenely indifferent to critical (and audience) reaction

| Aug 30, 2009

While the film's performances are intriguing and the direction tight, Shyamalan's fairytale ends up being more interesting than the actual film.

| Apr 29, 2009

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 7, 2008

... to put it bluntly, badly paced and completely trivial, not to mention utterly juvenile.

| Jul 4, 2008

This could have made a decent movie but the mythology comes so thick and fast that it mixes to a slurry as you watch.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 13, 2008

What is most annoying about "Lady" is that no one ever considers the possibility that nothing magical is actually occurring.The film starts out silly and just gets sillier.

| Apr 20, 2008

While I love where Night's head and heart are at, I think he tried to communicate them in a way that was clumsy, cumbersome, lacking in suspense and menace, and frankly, unexciting.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Feb 28, 2008

Ignore the critics on this movie. Yeah, I am one. Which means I'm telling you to ignore me, too.

| Original Score: B | Jul 23, 2007

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 14, 2007

The film is a mess, a ramshackle affair. Its silliness cannot sustain itself.

| Original Score: 52/100 | Apr 25, 2007

It's a fairy tale that never flies the way it should.

Full Review | Mar 24, 2007

We get it. We just don't want it. Because this Lady is the Showgirls of fantasy films.

| Feb 7, 2007

High on talk-heavy exposition and low on actual scares and thrills . . .

| Dec 28, 2006

A return to storytelling in the first order, "Lady in the Water" is highly recommended.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 13, 2006

Once the filmmaker spells everything out for us in the first fifteen or twenty minutes, the rest of the plot simply unfolds in a jumbled series of incomprehensible events.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Dec 8, 2006

Lady in the Water exposes Hollywood's master of suspense as a wet noodle.

| Nov 4, 2006