Lady in the Water

Lady in the Water (2006) is a fantasy drama written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan — watch it online on iFILM. Paul Giamatti plays Cleveland Heep, the quiet, slightly broken superintendent of a low-rent apartment complex who spends his days fixing pipes and avoiding eye contact.

One night he pulls a young woman out of the building's pool. Her name is Story, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, and she's not from here — she belongs to an underwater world described in an old bedtime fable, and dark creatures lurking in the grass are hunting her before she can make it back. Cleveland soon realizes that several of his tenants — including a crossword-obsessed film critic played by Bob Balaban and a weight-training slacker in a role Jeffrey Wright brings unexpected warmth to — each have a specific part to play in getting Story home safely. Shyamalan himself appears as one of the residents.

Shyamalan originally invented this story as a bedtime tale for his daughters, and that origin shows — it's gentle and strange in ways his other thrillers aren't. Stream Lady in the Water (2006) in full on iFILM.