Megasabin posted:

This movie was awful. The meta twist is neat, but has no bearing at all on the quality of the story in the movie itself, which was shallow and boring. I had high hopes after the Visit, but this is a backstep into his usual dreck.

I don't understand where the narrative tension was supposed to come from. Was the twist really that there was a beast? Did anyone honestly believe there was not going to be a beast? The whole movie builds up to it, and then we get 10 minutes of "payoff", which equates to him crawling on some walls, tanking a shotgun shell, and bending some metal bars. It wasn't even exciting. Also the trailer ruined 90% of it including him climbing on walls and bending the metal, which made the beast a foregone conclusion before the movie even started. It's not like the rest of the movie was even exciting. The entire thing was a slow burn up to a climax that never came.

I'm not even going to get started on Shyamalan's treatment of mental illness, which has always been piss poor. He just uses it so crudely, as a means to a narrative end.