Cinema: A Story in search of a writer

M Night Shayamalan's attempts at irony fall flat in The Lady in the Water, but Monster House has a healthy sense of fun about its own genre of animation. By Declan Burke

The Sixth Sense burdened M Night Shyamalan with a reputation as the writer/director who could deliver brooding psychological horrors with a devastating twist, although his recent outings (The Village, Signs) have repeated the formula with ever-diminishing returns. He's changed tack somewhat with The Lady in the Water: here a caretaker (Paul Giamatti) rescues a young woman (Bryce Dallas Howard) from his apartment block's swimming pool, only to discover that she's a creature from a bedtime story, a mermaid sent to deliver humanity from its worst excesses.

Shyamalan's radical new approach is to offer a big twist every five minutes or so, and the psychological horror has been replaced with a satire on the cinema-going public's expectations: the mermaid is called Story, and she's in search of a writer. Apparently Shyamalan would have us believe that we're engaged in a kind of meta-narrative experience about the process of constructing a movie, although the gory death of one of the many peripheral characters, a movie critic, suggests that the director is more concerned with offering a two-fingered gesture to those who dare criticise his genius.

Paul Giamatti (Sideways, Cinderella Man) is a likeable, intelligent actor, and he works very hard here as the caretaker who does everything in his power to protect Story from the predatory hyena-like beast attempting to prevent her from returning to her own world. Unfortunately, while the beast manages to ravage Story once or twice, Giamatti has precious little material to sink his teeth into: the plethora of dead ends and false twists means there isn't enough time spent on building up the audience's emotional connection with the main characters, while there are far too many minor characters jostling for attention on the periphery. As a result, what might have been an enjoyably whimsical fantasy becomes a leaden, predictable and perversely literal affair.

A much more satisfying fantastical experience is to be had with Monster House, in which two kids decide that the old house across the road isn't just possessed by a ghost, the house itself is a monster. DJ (voiced by Mitchel Musso) and his buddy Chowder (Sam Lerner) always considered the house a bit eerie, but when its owner Mr Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi) goes to hospital, the boys figure it's safe to explore. Big mistake. Soon the house is swallowing people up and the boys, aided and abetted by goody-two-shoes Jenny (Spencer Locke), take it upon themselves to solve the mystery of the monstrous house.

An animated movie that uses the same revolutionary techniques employed by Robert Zemeckis in The Polar Express, this offers its fair share of the usual horror tropes while also utilising a healthy, cynical sense of humour to poke fun at its jaded genre. The animation allows the action to explore places a live-action movie couldn't, and an excellent voice cast (Kathleen Turner, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Fred Willard) adds hugely to the fun.

The Lady in the Water **

Monster House ****