SHYAMALAN-TOBER: Lady in the Water (2006)

Find us at:

iTunes
Spotify
Patreon

CONTENT WARNING:In our discussion of Joker, discussion of mental illness, representing illness in film, brutal violence, and abuse. Please don’t see that movie.

We continue Shyamalan-Tober this week with the movie that nearly tanked M. Night’s career for good. I mean, what do you make of a horror-thriller filmmaker who suddenly decides to write and direct a grown-up fairy-tale based on a bedtime story he told his kids? How do you market that? Not very well, if you’re Warner Brothers, and critics took the chance to savage Shyamalan at every turn. But here’s the catch: this is a really good movie. It’s a little bit sloppy and messy, and it’s definitely weird, but it all manages to work. It might be the delightful performances of the ensemble cast, or the imaginative bends on the fairy tale genre, but whatever it is, M. Night has this movie completely figured out. We discuss 2006’s Razzie-Award Winning and actual good movie, Lady in the Water.

Macintosh & Maud have started a Patreon! Any little bit you can contribute helps, and we have special contributor-only content if you donate at the $2 level,
including our review of Patrick Swayze's surfing classic with the majestic Keanu Reeves, Point Break!

You can email us with feedback at [email protected], or you can connect with us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

If you like the podcast, make sure to subscribe and review on iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcatcher, and tell your friends.

Intro music taken from the Second Movement of Ludwig von Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Hong Kong (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 HK) license. To hear the full performance or get more information, visit the song page at the Internet Archive.