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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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Lady in the Water
EMAILPRINTWarner Bros. Pictures

Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 36 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 324 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Fantasy | Mystery | Suspense/Thriller
Written by: M. Night Shyamalan
Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Release Date:
Theatrical: July 21, 2006
DVD: December 19, 2006
Running Time: 110 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for some frightening sequences
Starring Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, Bob Balaban, Jeffrey Wright, Sarita Choudhury, Freddy RodrÃguez, Bill Irwin, and Jared Harris
M. Night Shyamalan's bedtime story comes to the big screen.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Signs The Happening The Sixth Sense The Village Unbreakable
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Washington Post Desson Thomson
If the ultimate goal is entertainment, then Lady in the Water enthusiastically rises to the task. In a movie laden with enough symbolism, shamanism and mythic lore to make Joseph Campbell dance a tribal jig, Shyamalan never forgets to have fun.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
There is a good chunk of Lady in the Water that is simply too well made and affectingly acted to dismiss as a mere exercise in arrogance.
Read Full Review >Empire Ian Freer
There is much pleasure to be had watching a born storyteller juggle more balls than even he can carry.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Shyamalan does project genuine menace and suspense into this mundane location, especially in nighttime scenes. But the magic that would transport you from reality into fantasy is missing.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
The man has gifts -- but acting and, it's increasingly clear, storytelling aren't among them.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
You leave Lady thinking there are still voices in Shyamalan's head well worth a listen.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Unfortunately, this narf's a drag: she talks like a fortune cookie and doesn't really do anything. 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.
Read Full Review >USA Today Mike Clark
The character played by lead Paul Giamatti is a dead-on Shyamalan protagonist: emotionally distanced and something of a train wreck.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
It's hard to think of a deadlier shotgun marriage than Jacques Tourneur's poetry of absence and Spielbergian uplift, but Shyamalan has patented the combo, adding pretentious camera movements that are peculiarly his own--even the jokes are pretty solemn.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
It lacks the simplicity and resonance of classic fairy tales: It's so muddled and belabored, it's hard to imagine the tykes ever staying awake long enough to hear how it all turned out.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Lady, like all of Shyamalan's movies, is a slick production with consistently interesting visuals... But the story is so convoluted and ultimately preposterous that you're almost embarrassed by the earnestness of the actors trying to carry it off.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Has the strengths and weaknesses of a one-man show.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
What's odd about Lady in the Water is that for all Shyamalan's histrionics, he's overcontrolled.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Shyamalan's most alienating and self-absorbed project to date.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Lady in the Water boasts an eclectic cast - almost entirely squandered.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
One of the more watchable films of the summer. A folly, true, but watchable.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Shockingly misconceived, poorly executed effort.
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
I will hold against him (Shyamalan) that Lady in the Water isn't scary, that its own inner logic breaks down at countless points along the way, and that its ending is disappointingly literal and just plain stupid. Lady in the Water is, however, funny at times, even intentionally so.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
There are moments of great beauty throughout (the film was lensed by Wong Kar-Wai cinematographer Christopher Doyle), and Shyamalan's heart is nowhere if not on his sleeve, but even these moments cannot steer Lady in the Water clear of its director's zealously over-earnest pretensions.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
Lady in the Water feels very much like something its author made up as he went along; and, if it weren't so damn weird, it would most certainly put you right to sleep.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
Lady doesn't work. Although he detonates a few terrific frissons involving the scrunt, the stabs at comedy are lurching and arrant. The spreading of tension from one character to many dilutes the mood. The would-be rapturous Spielbergian ending is on the wussy side.
Read Full Review >Variety Brian Lowry
A ponderous, self-indulgent bedtime tale. Awkwardly positioned, this gloomy gothic fantasy falls well short of horror.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
This is sloppy filmmaking, and it's likely to wipe away whatever luster still remains to Shyamalan's reputation.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
The result is a soggy swamp of nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyahing, its only grace notes are Giamatti's fine, nuanced performance as Heep and Christopher Doyle's handsome cinematography.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
This isn't nitpicking. Every bit of the tale is as full of holes as a wool sweater at a moth convention, and Shyamalan telegraphs each potential surprise.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
If you're not a fan of M. Night Shyamalan's convoluted, teasing thrillers, you'll find that getting into this movie is like cracking a puzzle in which the constructor keeps breaking his own rules or grabbing new ones from ultra-thin air.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Challenges us to believe in the power of myth. But the big challenge here is surviving the tedium of Shyamalan's meandering inventiveness. What's supposed to be fanciful storytelling is really just audience punishment.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
Lady is more of an ensemble picture, and truly the Cove is the most ethnically diverse and community-minded apartment complex in the continental United States.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust
There is something bizarrely compelling about the movie. It's slower than watching a train wreck but invokes that same level of disbelief.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
It comes off as tedious, pretentious, self-indulgent, talky and so garbled it might have been improvised by the actors.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
I suspect audiences will see Shyamalan's portentous doodle for what it is - the height of arrogance and a bad night out at the movies.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Crazy as this might sound, it turns out that self-indulgent ramblings designed to put your children to sleep are pretty much the opposite of art.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
A charmless, unscary, fatuous and largely incoherent fairy tale.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
This cloying piece of claptrap sets a high-water mark for pomposity, condescension, false profundity and true turgidity -- no small accomplishment for the man whose last two features were the deadly duo "Signs" and "The Village."
Village Voice Michael Atkinson
It's as if on some semiconscious level, Shyamalan, who I do not doubt is a serious and self-serious pop-creative original, is calling his own success into question and daring his audience to gulp down larger and spikier clusters of manure, just to see if they will. Or he's lost his mind.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.9 (out of 10) based on 324 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Harv G. gave it a9:
Weird, all the negative reviews. I had a knot in my throat several times in the movie. I can totally understand why someone wouldn't like this movie, but to say M.N.S. can't tell a story is wrong.
Angela H gave it a10:
I am continually drawn to this work every time I stumble upon it on cable -- and no matter what I was doing or should be doing -- am drawn back into it without fail, like a moth -- or 'butterfly' -- to the flame. And I don't for the life of me understand the critics' near-universal negative response to this movie. It makes me think they perhaps deserve the just-desserts fate of the critic in the movie. I thought critics were usually enamored with originality, multi-layered narratives, and meditations on film and storytelling. That this movie is all of these is undeniable. That is also beautiful and magical in the extreme is also without doubt. Perhaps it is these two more 'feminine' attributes that are lacking in today's critics -- notably, still mostly male -- and that is why the near universal defiling of this work of a true original master.
Chris M. gave it a1:
Shyamalan's faithful audience has been supporting him since the Sixth Sense's wonderful surprise but this is no such movie!He overloaded the film with numerous character's,confusing ideas,mythic creatures and stupid anti-critic allegories as if he is trying to prove how imaginative he can be,turning it into a chaotic mess with no substance or purpose,It's to immature even for a child to watch and the attempt of making a bedtime story is no excuse.The worst thing is that he tries to even lure humoristic moments out of it.An undeniable mind-f*ck!
Stephen P gave it a10:
This is my favorite movie. People who review these films should not be taken so seriously. This film is not a horror movie, but an incredible story of love, redemption, and sacrifice. Those words could be used to describe many films, but as a teenage boy who is quite a film enthusiast, never have I seen a film that has impressed me more in the acting department (let alone cinematography, music, or direction) than Lady in the Water. I am not a fan of Shyamalan at all, as I didn't like Sixth Sense, Signs, or the Happening. But this movie, this is something different. This movie made me want to make films when I grow up. This movie actually changed my life, and M Night's character in the movie wasn't him blowing his own horn... he was simply filling the part of a character who was in the BEDTIME STORY he thought up for his kids. I love this movie, and I only wish that people could have another chance to see this. I was fourteen when I saw this film, and I cried. I was a fourteen year old teenage boy... and I cried. Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, (heck, even Bob Baraban) do a fantastic job. This movie will one day (hopefully) be seen for what it really is: a cinematic masterpiece. Obviously, my views are shared with a few other folk around, the high ratings for this movie are aplenty on this website. Thank you, M Night Shyamalan for changing my life with your beautiful film, and thank you Metacritic for allowing my voice to be heard. Peace.
Brandon T gave it a6:
A weird movie but oddly entertaining and chilling. Shyamalan mixes some humor and horror in this powerful film. Not the strongest of his set though and certainly not a classic.
Steve F gave it a10:
Seeing most of the reviews for this movie I can see that you will either love it or hate. I love it!
Dan F. gave it a1:
I enjoy fantasy films, and I like all of M. Night's other films, but this was downright terrible.
