I just cannot fathom how Shyamalan could have been writing this script and not see that it’s embarrassing and laughable. I would struggle to count the moments on four hands the amount of times I thought, “Did they actually just say those words?” Lines such as, "He's hearing the voice of God through a crossword puzzle!" and "My mom told me more of the story before she threw a cushion at me," that inspire unintentional snickering from the viewer. One starts to think whether or not the humour was intentional, however the rest of the film is so intent on playing out its ideas with such conviction that I think the laughs come very much unintentionally.

Aside from the pretentiousness of Shyamalan actually making this film and thinking anything he does will be pure gold (because, of course, he’s the guy who made The Sixth Sense, right?) there is one plot point that is all sorts of condescending and pretentious. He appears himself in the film in a small role (as he usually does) but, according to him, an important one. He deems it fit to put himself in his own movie as a writer who this “lady in the water” tells that in the future he will write a book that will effectively change mankind. He actually thinks making himself a sort of writer of “the new Bible”, as the film might as well call it, inspires admiration. Well it doesn’t; it comes off as indulgent and self-loving, an added element that doesn’t help when the rest of the movie is as bad as it is.

There is very little reason to even bother spending any amount of time on this film. Paul Giamatti is at least watchable (and when is he not?) and there is a book and film critic character that does invoke a few comedic moments but that’s about it really. It saddens me when a film has me struggling to think of elements that make it anywhere near worthwhile; I would love it if it was always the other way around.

One of Lady in the Water’s many, many core problems is the fact that it just assumes we’ll buy into this mythology that it’s created from the beginning onwards. The problem is it rushes into it within the first ten minutes, running with the mystical storyline but never allowing us any time to start believing in it ourselves. If it had done exactly that maybe we could forgive some of its ridiculous elements that we come across later on. However seeing that it’s more interested in doing exactly what it wants to do and less interested in engaging its audience the result is one dreadful motion picture.