This is an odd film. A very odd film.
Ever since The Sixth Sense Shyamalan has been known as the “twist guy” for his film endings; I don’t think that is a fair description. And while you can say that Unbreakable, Signs and The Village all had twists to their endings, the twists weren’t all that important. The films were stories about people, truth, and finding out who you are. The Lady in the water continues in this vein, but at the same time it is a very different type of film. As Shyamalan has said, it is a bedtime story. A fairy tale, for children. So it is, of course, going to be more simplistic and yet at the same time it is more complicated than that.