Nice review, Alex. I can understand the difficulty in doing a good review when there's so much you can't talk about because you don't want to give anything away.

I've only seen one of his films. "The Sixth Sense" seemed too frightening to me, so I had someone who saw it tell me the whole story. I went to see "Unbreakable" and liked most of it but really hated "the twist". I pretty much refused to see "Signs" and didn't get around to asking someone what the twist was for that.

Alex, if you or anyone else who has seen the movie would be willing to do so, I'd appreciate if you could post the twist to this film in a spoiler box. Better yet, Alex, if you have a free minute and feel like it, I'd love to see what you'd have to say if you could written what you'd wanted to write without having to worry about giving stuff away, all in spoiler boxes of course. Thanks.

I'd love to know what I would have written too. But we'll probably never find out because I don't have time to spend another couple hours writing it.

I will say this, since writing the review last night, I am already feeling more sour on the movie. I still recommend it, but pretty tepidly.

Here is the twist. Warning, if you have ANY intention of seeing the film, do not read this as the whole experience will be ruined for you.


This is an isolated 1890s village that is surrounded by monsters that keep them from interacting with the wider world.

Turns out that William Hurt is the son of a murdered billionaire. In the mid-1970s he met a group of people in grief counselling sessions. Everybody had been hurt by the modern violent world. So Hurt used his billions to set up a preserve where they could live in isolation and innocence.

The monsters are not real, but rather the founders wearing costumes and creating a mythology to keep the children from ever leaving the village and re-entering the modern world.

Thanks for posting that Alex.

Here's my comment to what you posted, so anyone who hasn't seen the movie who wants to at some point shouldn't read my comment either.

OK, I think that's really lame. I think I would have been really mad if I'd sat through it and that was the explanation. Confirms my conviction never to see another of his films again.

Seems a good enough director. He needs to fire his writer (himself).
I think he would be a better Hitchcock-type director than an Orson Welles-type director.