Director Profile: What Everyone Gets Wrong About M. Night Shyamalan

Glass opens on January 18th, and I couldn't be more excited. As such, I'm featuring a series on M. Night Shyamalan's catalog of work. Not every movie will be featured; only my favorites. Stay tuned and enjoy this peek into the mildly obsessed.

Despite some very notable exceptions, I've always been a fan of M. Night Shyamalan's work, and for many years, it's seemed as though I was the only one. His career has been one of controversy: once called the next Hitchcock or Spielberg, he has been alternately lauded and reviled. I've always felt that he and his work were deeply misunderstood. Still, with the opening of Glass (the final chapter in what has been dubbed the "Eastrail 177 Trilogy") and the recent success of Split and The Visit, the message is clear: liking M. Night is back in style.

How vindicating. 

A quick history lesson

As of January 18th, this unique filmmaker will have made more than 16 movies, on two-thirds of which he serves as writer, director, and producer. His breakout hit The Sixth Sense propelled him to fame overnight and set a high bar not only for his career but also for the horror genre. It remained the highest-grossing horror movie of all time for nearly two decades when it was finally knocked out of the spot in 2017 by the remake of It. Shyamalan had even greater financial success with Unbreakable, which turned the superhero origin story on its head. 

Though his next couple of movies, Signs and The Village, were also financially successful, there was a decline in positive critical reception, and fans began to turn their backs on the writer-director. Suddenly, people felt the movies were predictable, the twists were unsatisfactory, and Shyamalan's Vonnegut-esque predilection for writing himself into his movies was dubbed "douchey." The shine was off the penny, and no matter what Shyamalan did, it seemed he would never be forgiven for not turning out another The Sixth Sense.

At least that's how it looked to me.

The problem of loving a pariah

Perhaps the worst part of liking someone so disliked is feeling like you can't even talk about them. I can't tell you the number of times people have rolled their eyes or outright laughed in my face when I mentioned how these movies bring me joy.

I've loved M. Night's work since I first saw Unbreakable when it opened in 2000. Like everyone else, I had enjoyed The Sixth Sense. Unlike everyone else, I recognized that it was more than a ghost story. Still, despite the amazing performances, the compellingly haunting atmosphere, and the ever-famous twist, it never quite touched me the way that The Village does. I even love The Lady in the Water, which is still widely panned as having done the worst of all the above sins.

It seems that I'm always out-of-sync with popular opinion (especially with critics), so it's not surprising to me that the movies of Shyamalan that I loved most were often the most hated. What I did find disturbing is the vehemence with which everyone loathes Shyamalan. He went from genius to joke in nothing flat, and people who previously loved him suddenly were ashamed to admit they even liked him in the first place. "Well, The Sixth Sense was okay, but he really sucks," they'd say, begrudging.

Suddenly, a couple of his films do better in the last couple of years, and you've got critics coming out of the woodworks to say how misunderstood he is, and what an auteur and amazing writer-director he is. Who's rolling their eyes now?

They are right about one thing, though, because I've long felt that M. Night Shyamalan's movies are misunderstood. You know why?

His movies aren't actually about what people think they are

I'm not going to try and convince you that the problems other critics point out when talking about Shyamalan's movies are all wrong. My problem with their complaints is that I most often feel that those critics are simply missing the point. So, if your main issues with these movies stem from the twist absurdity, meta leanings, or even leaps in logic, I encourage you to look closer.

For one thing, regardless of the type - and despite the fact that his movies feel like they're perpetually set during autumn - Shyamalan's work has this warmth to it that never fails to reel me in. It may come off like a horror movie, but The Sixth Sense is an incredibly emotional piece, filled with characters who are motivated by love. In fact, I often refer to the first three breakout movies as the Shyamalan "Trinity" Trilogy. Signs is most obviously about faith, and Unbreakable is all about hope, about finding your purpose:

"You know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world, to not know why you're here. That's...That's just an awful feeling." 

~Elijah Price

It is through this faith, hope, and love that nearly all of Shyamalan's characters manage to overcome their pain and to triumph over their fears, real or imagined. There's an innocence in the way he does it, a lack of artifice to the characters and stories that doesn't require idiocy in the characters or the audience to be believed. It's this innocence that makes you identify with and even agree with actions such as keeping the lie of a secret world or allowing a crazed and cannibalistic "beast" to escape. Even when Elijah Price reveals his villainous nature, you find yourself crying not only in empathy for him but also in joy, because you know that however terrible his actions may have been, his motivations were pure. Even in this post-9/11 world (Unbreakable came out the year prior), you can't hate Elijah for fulfilling his chosen purpose.

Shyamalan's movies leave you haunted by beauty, by all the epic thoughts and feelings that we ought to feel in everyday life, but often don't or can't. His movies give you the sense that your world has changed forever, that you are changed.

That's the magic of M. Night Shyamalan. For all his flaws, you can't take that away from him.

Playing with the Retrospective

Not everything Shyamalan has done will be profiled during this retrospective. I decided to focus only on movies that he wrote and directed (and, for the most part, produced). It also didn't matter if I've seen all of his movies. For the record, in addition to his pre-breakout films, I have not yet seen Devil or The Visit. I'm here to talk about my favorites, so that's what you'll get. As an homage to The Sixth Sense, I'm doing six movies over the next month or so, including Glass.

Those we do not speak of

Perhaps there's a level of irony in choosing to use a phrase from one of my favorite of his movies to describe the one movie of his that I absolutely detested. Since I'm not going to spend an entire post to lambast his work, I will say that I couldn't stand The Last Airbender. Even I wasn't able to forgive that one, much as I wanted to. The series was just too dear to my heart, and too many liberties were taken with it. It hasn't made me hate Shyamalan, though. If anything, it's the very exception that proves the rule.

So, I hope you enjoy my little journey down the twisty rabbit hole that is the work of M. Night Shyamalan. If you are a fan, may you feel vindication. If you aren't, maybe this will give you a new lens through which to view these movies. After all, it is through Shyamalan that I discovered my love of composer James Newton Howard, and learned just how enjoyable Samuel L. Jackson's range is. Furthermore, the way he layers in little reveals and hints of what's to come gives his films a richness that keeps you riveted to the action and, however many times you watch them, you love to see each moment unfold.

So grab your pocket watch, and prepare to see your world shift. I'll see you at the theater.

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