M. Night Shyamalan has directed four films from his own screenplays. The first, “Wide Awake,” was a sentimental but fairly straightforward tale about a child’s faith; no one remembers it, and it made back less than 10 percent of its budget. The next three were suspense thrillers, and were all enormous financial successes.
What changed? According to Shyamalan, as he told “Esquire” a few years ago, he figured out the precise formula for what makes a blockbuster movie. After seeing his last three movies, we think we’ve cracked it, too: take a troubled but laconic dude, surround him with spooooooooky circumstances, and then drag out the suspense until there’s some big twist ending everyone will talk about. Now his fourth thriller, “The Village,” is about to hit theaters: are we still as enraptured with the Shyamalan formula as ever; or has the thrill gone now that we’re wise to his tricks?
Tara Ariano
It’s been gone. I sincerely believed that “Unbreakable” was his “Heaven’s Gate” and that it would be the movie that unmasked him as a total fraud. It didn’t happen then, but I feel like “Signs” probably lost him a few true believers. I mean, good grief, the aliens can’t abide water, so they invade a planet that’s covered in water in some very high percentage — one that I would know if I’d taken Geography? And they’ve mastered intergalactic travel but they can’t puzzle their way out of a damn pantry? Ultimately, the whole mess boils down to one man’s struggle with his own faith, and his doubt that God’s goodness still exists after the death of his wife. Which is a rich subject for a movie, so why muddy it up with all that alien crap? Especially when they looked like something a young Night might have doodled in his fourth-grade Civics notebook. When Mel Gibson chopped off that one alien’s fingers, they looked like edamame pods. WEAK.
Sarah Bunting
Oh, look who doesn’t like edamame now.
Just kidding. I’ll grant you that, Shyamalan’s reveal doesn’t always live up to the slow build that precedes it — but when it pays off, it really pays off. I saw “The Sixth Sense” in a crowded theater, and when we got to the twist, we let out a collective “oh…ohhhh.” I’d never seen a movie hold a room that way before.
And I loved “Unbreakable.” (I did not love the kid, who also did a gavotte on my nerves in “Gladiator,” but at least Shyamalan spared us Creepy Joel Osment that time around.) It’s the biggest film-school-sophomore copout comment ever, but I loved looking at it — Elijah’s angry hair, the overhead shot of the hopscotch courts, Dunn’s poncho-as-cape obscuring his face a la Bruce Wayne.
It worked for me, and so did the ambiguity at the end — why did Elijah kill all those people? Because he’s evil? Because he’s crazy? Or because the balance between good and evil dictated that he find his nemesis?
Yeah, it’s pretty overwrought stuff, but then, I’m a pretty overwrought person.
Tara
Please stop comparing yourself to the most overrated hack of our generation, or you’re dead to me.
There’s nothing wrong with making big old twisty thrillers, if that’s your thing. It just bugs me that Shyamalan takes himself (and his movies) so seriously. If there weren’t this mythos surrounding him, the whole “Buried Secret” hoax on Sci-Fi a couple of weeks ago wouldn’t have worked. We've been conditioned to think Shyamalan’s something pretty special, or else we wouldn’t care what (fake) dark secrets and (fraudulent) mysterious forces have shaped him into the (put-on) sicko who could come up with such disturbing (not really) subjects for films.
I’m not a total grinch. I went into “The Sixth Sense” knowing the big twist, and I still thought it was a pretty good movie (even if it didn’t adhere to its own interior logic; the reveal is only credible if you assume that the Bruce Willis character didn’t do anything at all in his post-mortal life that we didn’t see on film, because wouldn’t he have noticed at some point that no one except that one creepy-ass kid was acknowledging him at all?). But since that formula — moody, supernatural story, way more reliant on plot than characterization, ending with some mind-bending twist — worked for Shyamalan in such a big way, he hasn’t dared to try anything different since, and the returns have been diminishing with each subsequent outing.
Let me be more succinct: Hack-a-doodle-doo!
Sarah
Again, I enjoy his work, but I’d argue that it doesn't rely enough on plot. Shyamalan spends a lot of time setting the stage for that big twist, lingering on certain objects, milking pauses, which I like — but I get the sense that he puts so much effort into creating suspense that he doesn’t think his climax through all the way. He’s great at drawing an audience in, but then sometimes he doesn’t seem to know where to go from there.
Maybe he should stop trying so hard to top himself in the surprise-ending department, but I like that he takes himself and his work seriously. Horror and the supernatural don’t get much respect in the culture at large, and it’s hard to get a scary movie made and seen, that isn’t either 1) a parody of the genre; 2) aimed at teens; 3) a splatter-fest that substitutes gore and amputations for genuine tension; or 4) some boring combo platter of those three.
At least Shyamalan’s trying, and he doesn’t get it right every time — the end of “Unbreakable” explained too much; he shouldn’t have shown us the aliens in “Signs” at all if he couldn’t do better than the snow-pea hands — but he gets closer than most. It’s not himself that he takes seriously, but the paranormal, the beyond, the news of the weird. I’d rather Shyamalan ask “what if” and not come up with a satisfying answer than sit through slapped-together dreck like “Secret Window.”
Tara
Girl, please.
SB
Well, that’s me told.
Tara
Look, if our standard for what makes a good thriller is “better than ‘Secret Window,’” then you’re right, he delivers. But “The Others” beat Shyamalan at his own game, and spared us a self-important cameo from its director.
Sarah
I liked “The Others” too, but…talk about interior logic not holding up. Why didn’t the servants turn up at the house immediately after…okay, we’re not arguing about Alejandro Amenábar, so never mind.
Tara
My bottom line is that M. Night Shyamalan isn’t incompetent; he’s just subtlety-impaired, deeply in love with himself, and a one-trick pony. It’s not his fault that his films get hyped and praised beyond all reasonable measure — that’s media groupthink — but it is his fault that he’s willing to feed it to the tune of a three-hour wank on the Sci-Fi Network.
Sarah
And my bottom line is that, while the Shyamalan-fomercial propaganda is annoying, I can separate that from the movies themselves and enjoy what he’s trying to do, even if it doesn’t always succeed.
Tara
I just seriously cannot get past the ending of “Signs.” It’s not like it’s the first half-baked alien movie I’ve ever seen, but it’s certainly the one that was most pleased with itself.
Sarah
Well, that’ll teach him to not cast Bruce Willis.