I can think of some people who would say that there just has to be some kind of a lame excuse surrounding Mark Wahlberg's being attached to this project, but really, Shyamalan was going to have to get some big-named, somewhat respected talent in this film in order to sell it. I'm not saying that this film is so bland that it doesn't have a whole lot to promote, but this project's other big marketing move was to emphasize that this is Shyamalan's first R-rated film (His films have gotten very grown-up ever since that adorable little tale about a little boy who sees terrified, brutally dead people), so, needless to say, there's not a whole lot to talk about here, at least when it comes to strengths, which are still present to some extent. Perhaps the best thing in this film is James Newton Howard's score, and I'm sure that sounds pretty harsh, but really, Howard sets no low bar here with his surprisingly highly inspired musical efforts, infusing an intensely subtle minimalism into stylish, often unconventional and perhaps consistently realized compositions, whose very atmospheric flavor is both nifty on a musical level and worthy as a storytelling compliment.
The film's soundtrack is certainly more worthy of flavoring up this story's engagement value than plenty of areas in storytelling itself, and it's shame that that's the case, but at least there is something going to doing justice to a premise of limited potential.
Later on, I'll be touching more upon just how thin and silly this film's premise is, but right now, I'm going to get into the meat here, because this is, in fact, a promising story, at least in some ways, boasting a questionable and even conventional premise, but still offering some intriguing dramatic and thematic weight behind a conflict that is still pretty refreshing in a lot of ways.
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