Paul Giamatti as Cleveland Heep and Bryce Dallas Howard as Story, the narf, star in Warner Bros Pictures’ Lady in the Water, ©2006
M. Night Shyamalan has personally been one of my favorite directors of these last few years filled with poorly directed horror. With the success of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs, he’s been embraced most and I’ve come to see him as a modern Alfred Hitchcock. But hey, what do I know? Though still a fairly new director, Shyamalan has reintroduced the horror, curiosity-killed-the cat, eerieness to his films.
I remember seeing the film Signs in theaters with my mother and aunt while vacationing in Massachusetts as I am now. It was indeed one of the scariest films I had ever seen and staying in a small house in a small quiet town didn’t help me recover from some of the terrifying imagery. My family and I stayed in the up-stairs, which was basically an attic that had cleaned up very well. I had to sleep on the air mattress considering both the bed and futon were occupied by my parents and my siblings. The attic was divided into two sections, one a large room for whatever, and the other a storage room. All I remember from that night was staring at the space between the bottom of the door and floor. The image of the fingers of the aliens coming from under that door haunted me until dawn.
In an apartment complex located somewhere in Philadelphia (M. Night’s native area which he also based Signs), The Cove, a lonely superintendent, Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti, is always working all day following people around and picking up after them. Besides the memories, the unknown presence splashing around in the pool has been bugging him, it’s against the rules to be in the pool at night. After stumbling into the pool and almost drowing, he wakes up in his cottage by the hotel and stares into the eyes of a beautiful woman, Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), a narf. She explains she’s been sent to find someone, her vessel, by those living in “The Blue World.”
Cleveland receives help from a young Korean girl (Cindy Cheung) whose mother (June Kyoto Lu) tells a bedtime story involving a narf, their purpose, and what hunts them… He learns almost everything he needs to in order to help her complete her mission, get her home, and dodge the dangers, organic wolf creatures called crunts, that have a taste for narf.
Thankfully nothing in this film is a hoax like 2004’s disappointment, The Village. The story (not the narf, the actual tale) was originally developed by M. Night himself. It was a bedtime story he used to tell his children, that would occasionally get scarier until he kept his children up telling the story numerous times back to back.
With a brilliantly talented actor like Paul Giamatti, it’s a shame he hasn’t been in that many films, and a shame that he hasn’t won an Oscar yet. He’s been nominated numerous times for his performance in Cinderella Man and the lead role in Sideways (my personal favorite film of 2004). None the less, he’s portrayed the American hero in all of us. A regular guy, doing regular things, and then getting the fishing hook of opportunity in his films and his character always bites the line.
I would truly like to see more of him. In Lady in the Water, he plays the landlord I’m sure most people would like to have. He’s simply irresistible and brings drama and a little bit of humor to his role of Mr. Heep, a balding man with a beard, wears tiny glasses and a green shirt and pants, not to mention a horrible stuttering problem.
Bryce Dallas Howard plays the sea nymph, acted innocently enough. It struck me as odd that like most sea nymphs and mermaids portrayed in films always had some sort of sexual aura and eroticism to their character. Though partially nude throughout the entire film wearing nothing but one of Cleveland’s shirts and holding a vibrant red hair, there’s no lust to her character and though this film was made for kids, this just struck me a tad off beat.
Director M. Night Shyamalan enriches us with some impressive cinematography accompanied with Christopher Doyle. What swung me in their favor were easily the shots from the inside of the pool looking towards the surface and shots as the crunt crouched in the grass looking outward toward prey. Many of the other shots are in various places, none low, but many high and almost examining the blueprint of the apartments filled with both quirky and seriously interesting tenants.
Only two problems arose with me with this film, these monkey creatures that supposedly kill these wolves that we hear nothing about until they magically come to the rescue, and why didn’t anyone question who Story was, don’t they watch movies? For all they know she could have bee there to eat them…
The film was also written by Shyamalan as was the bedtime story. My question is, as were for The Village, The Sixth Sense, and Unbreakable, how did he come up with this? The story is a charming bed time story as it is advertised and is kid and adult welcoming. Though there were two or three creep and scare moments, I enjoyed jumping a little at the silliness. Bob Babalan plays the bold and arrogant new tenant (hilariously though), a new book and film critic of a local publisher. I valued his monologue while confronting the scrunt as how this would be the death of a side character in a trashy horror film, but possibly a narrow escape in a corny family film. Thankfully this film wasn’t a narrow escape from a bad film, but an inviting work for his children and audiences.
Rated PG-13 for frightening sequences.
Running time 110 minutes.