Wait, let me get this straight: “”Lady in the Water”” implies that if we are greedy, condescending bastards who ignore the supernatural long enough, a semi-naked chick will rise out of our swimming pool and try to save us. Weird – I could have sworn that was the plot of “”The Ring.””

Any way you look at it, “”Lady”” was an exercise in hubris, as M. Night Shyamalan took every aspect of his personal life and vomited it onto the big screen: his acting skills, his hometown and even the heartwarming bedtime story he told to his children about werewolfish “”scrunts”” and the jackass human race. To make matters worse, the usually talented, fresh-out-of-“”Sideways”” Paul Giamatti decided that a stuttering protagonist would be just what “”Lady”” needed to render it completely incomprehensible.

Look, man, we respect you as a director. In fact, we respected you so much, we were willing to let that embarrassing tripe you called “”The Village”” slide. But with the preachy, pretentious mythology of “”Lady,”” the tripe just hit the fan. As plot holes gaped wider and inconsistencies piled higher, the only thing that choked us up was resentment toward the past two hours, mocking us with its wasted possibilities.