It's turning out to be a torrid summer for Indian-American film director M.Night Shyamalan.
Shyamalan's latest movie Lady in the Water has attracted very caustic reviews from top movie critics in the U.S.
Written and directed by Shyamalan, Lady in the Water centers around a water nymph called Story, who lives in an apartment swimming pool as she waits for a chance to return to the Blue World.
Shyamalan, who's built a reputation for his spooky stories, received his Worst treatment at the hands of the irreverent New York Post.
Reviewing Lady in the Water for the Post, Lou Lumenick described the movie as a "charmless, unscary, fatuous and largely incoherent fairy tale."
In the same piece, Lumenick wrote that Shyamalan had "turned into a crackpot with messianic delusions who's one more flop away from directing TV commercials."
According to Rene Rodriguez of the Miami Herald, Lady in the Water "plainly feels like a bad idea."
Leading film critics on the West Coast seem to agree. The Los Angeles Times dubbed it "a major misfire."
Even Shyamalan's hometown newspaper Philadelphia Inquirer joined in the chorus of criticism. The paper termed the film "extremely silly."
To Manohla Dargis of The New York Times, Lady in the water was evidence that Shyamalan "had lost his creative marbles." But she still considers it "one of the more watchable films of the summer."
Lady in the Water is an adaptation of a bedtime story the director told his young children.
Warner Brothers released the movie after Disney passed up the opportunity (wisely in retrospect).
Shyamalan shot into fame after the phenomenal success of the Bruce Willis starrer Sixth Sense (1999). Since then, the Gladwyne ( a Philadelphia suburb) film maker has found it a tough burden to meet the high expectations.
After Sixth Sense, Shyamalan's subsequent films - The Village, Signs and Unbreakable - have received a comparatively tepid response.
Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan was born on August 6, 1970 in Pondicherry to doctor parents, who migrated to the U.S. later. He made up his middle name Night while at college.
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