Maybe it’s “disappointing” numbers really came from the fact that the studio played it up as an alien invasion movie, and word of mouth dampened some of the enthusiasm when it didn’t really turn out to be that exactly (and the lack of on screen aliens didn’t help). Plus, it didn’t have a “twist ending,” an issue that has hampered Shayamalan to this day. Even at the press screening I attended — and the movie did freak me out a bit sitting in a large auditorium with a handful of people spread out all over the place — we were a little let down by the ending, waiting for the twist, expecting something big to happen. You can have a great movie up to the end, but that’s the last thing people will remember and if you don’t have a great ending, the word of mouth will kill a movie. It obviously didn’t fail because of that, but perhaps it could have made more if it had been marketed a little differently. And Shyamalan still had a lot to live up to at that point. He could probably make the same movie today and people would hail it as a masterpiece because his last batch of movies have been pure crap (in fact, he really hasn’t made a good movie since Signs).