A personal reflection on M.NIGHT SHYAMALAN
A personal reflection on M.NIGHT SHYAMALAN
Feb 23
Remember the first time you watched The Sixth Sense? Perhaps you were lucky enough to not know the ending upon your first viewing – making the twist all the more powerful. I remember hearing about the film long before I saw it, there was always someone at school talking about how they went with their older brother and it scared the shit out of them. ‘The ending is amazing’ was a phrase I found myself hearing all too often.
The Sixth Sense was pretty much a cultural phenomenon during its release. It was heralded as the savior of the ‘traditional’ thriller, said to be one of the scariest films of all time and had an ending which caught everyone by surprise. When I finally saw the film – on VHS – my 13 year old self immediately agreed with the buzz. This was one of the greatest films I’d seen and its writer/director M. Night Shyamalan was my new hero.
Oh how heroes can fall.
M. Night’s last film The Happening is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. If I think about how bad it is for too long, I get the same dizzy feeling that occurs when I try to fathom how big the universe really is, and how tiny and insignificant we all are. If I were able to go back in time and show my 13 year old self The Happening, I’m positive my 13 year old self would think I’m joking and try to push me down some stairs for lying to him. Luckily, another version of me would travel back in time to save myself, creating a time paradox in the process.
I guess it’s a good thing time travel hasn’t been invented.
M. Night didn’t fall from grace quickly though, he wasn’t a ‘one hit wonder’. Instead, his fall was a slow and painful one. After the success of The Sixth Sense, Night was practically able to make any sort of movie he wanted, he had total creative freedom. Not only that, he was offered some of Hollywood’s biggest properties with Night famously turning down the opportunity to write a script for Indiana Jones 4 (this was well before Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was announced, although the basic story would have been the same). Rather than taking whatever he could get, Night opted to write and direct his own story once again. The result was Unbreakable.
Unbreakable is arguably Night’s best film and seems to be getting recognized as such the more that time passes. Unfortunately, it didn’t fare so well at the box office during its release because it was marketed as a thriller from “the writer/director of the Sixth Sense”. The general moviegoer went in expecting another supernatural thriller and what they got instead was a slow paced drama about a man discovering he is a super hero. Keep in mind as well that Unbreakable was released before the Hollywood onslaught of ‘comic book’ movies.
The story took its time to develop characters and plot and Night’s cinematography reflected this. Unbreakable has less than 500 cuts (or edits) in it. To put this in perspective, a large action scene can have well over 500 cuts in it, particularly if it’s of the modern Transformers variety. Although Unbreakable also contained a twist ending, it didn’t feel tacked on and served as a natural climax to the story.
Following the relative commercial failure of Unbreakable, Night again set out to write and direct an original idea of his own. Signs was written with a large movie audience in mind and the result was another box office hit. Thankfully, Night didn’t simply ‘phone it in’ to make a quick buck. The whole film was a homage to the classic thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock, with James Newton Howard’s eerie score conjuring up images from Psycho. Much like his previous films, Night lets the tension build slowly, hinting at horrific images and creatures without ever showing them fully. I still remember sitting in a packed theatre and almost jumping out of my seat when that ‘birthday party footage’ was shown…you know what I’m talking about.
The performances were great and while the ending usually splits people down the middle, I found it very satisfying. In terms of pure entertainment, I think it’s Night’s best effort.
Unfortunately this is where we must pause and take a moments silence. Night could seemingly do no wrong. The man was able to create audience friendly films without sacrificing story and artistry.
Something went wrong after this period though. His films started to show cracks, weaknesses that had never been apparent in his other works began to rear their ugly heads. I won’t dwell too much on the following 3 films because their faults far outweigh any good.
The Village: Although it was beautifully shot, contained a stellar cast (all of them delivering pretty good performances) and was home to one of James Newton Howard’s best scores, its script was extremely lacking. The plot was quite thin and unnecessarily contrived, containing 3 twists – the major of these feeling tacked on simply for “shock value”. To be fair, the love story was quite appealing, although it is ultimately lost in the mess of everything around it.
This was Night faulting a little, I was prepared to accept that.
Lady in the Water: Based on a bedtime story Night used to tell his daughters. The concept is sort of interesting, but the narrative is one of the most needlessly complex scripts to be put on screen in a long time. Lady begins as a simple fairy tale, and the first 30 minutes or so are quite innocent and charming. Unfortunately it goes downhill rapidly after this, breaking the 4th wall in the most absurd ways. A film critic addresses the camera halfway through the film, announcing that he won’t be killed because the story is following a formula…only to be mauled to death. I suppose this is Night saying that he isn’t following the standard structure of a script, which would be fine were it not for the horrible path he chooses to take instead. Likewise a central character – a writer who will save the world – is played by none other than M.Night himself. Whilst I don’t think he intentionally meant to seem so full of himself, it’s hard to ignore.
Lady in the Water was the last straw for a lot of film buffs; they’d officially lost interest in Night.
Unfortunately, it was only going to get worse.
The Happening is currently M.Night’s most recent theatrical release. It tells the story of a supernatural disaster which hits the eastern side of the USA. What kind of disaster? Well, the planet has decided that we (humans) are treating it like shit. Not content with going down quietly, trees, grass, and whatever other plant life you can think of release a toxin into the air. When inhaled by us pesky humans, this toxin causes us to kill ourselves in the most creative way possible.
I guess the bare bones of the concept are interesting, but that’s all The Happening has going for it. The script has some of the worst dialog I’ve ever heard in a movie. Characters spout their motivation without any subtlety “Hey be careful with that [ring], it has meaning to me”. The horror elements were clearly thrown together with very little effort. A scene involving characters running away from the wind may seem chilling on paper (although probably not) but on the big screen it just looks, well, silly.
It seemed as though it was all over for M.Night. I had desperately tried to hold on to something, anything from his films that could inspire me. For a while the cinematography and acting was enough, but alas, that too failed after a while. How could this be the same man who wrote and directed The Sixth Sense all those years ago? While I’ll always love his first 3 films, I can’t ignore the fact that something has gone wrong with one of my filmmaking heroes…
…or at least, something was wrong. I could be speaking too soon, but Night’s next film The Last Airbender seems to be showing all kinds of promise. We won’t know for sure until it’s released, but it seems as though the process of adapting a story – as opposed to constantly writing his own – has done wonders for Night. Perhaps it’s what he needed all along. I’ve written some thoughts on the trailer itself and what we can expect from the movie, so I won’t reiterate that here.
In terms of M. Night Shyamalan as a film maker, I’m living in hope again. My inner monologue is once again offering excuses; Sure The Village was a little weak, but it looked great! Lady in the Water was pretty silly, but he just needed to get that out of his system. The Happening…well, The Happening was plain awful. He’s back in form with The Last Airbender though, I’m sure of it…I’m sure…
I truly hope The Last Airbender is as exciting as it looks. It’s a chance for Night to redeem himself in the eyes of critics and film lovers, it also provides him with a fresh start and the opportunity to establish himself as the master filmmaker we all know he can be…or was…or something.
Come on Night, you can do it!
