How on earth does M. Night Shyamalan manage to do it? At the same time, how on earth does M. Night Shyamalan manage to not do it? Indeed, how can such a high-profile director churn out a masterpiece such as The Sixth Sense, and then somehow manage to get the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender on that same résumé? It’s perhaps the filmmaker’s striking duality that continues to draw crowds year after year.
It’s at the point where making a film that has audiences on the fence is an intriguing development for Shyamalan, whose credit is perhaps further tarnished when you realize that such a film was backed up by considerable acting talent. Whatever the case may be, the debate surrounding one of Shyamalan’s most divisive films reigns as strongly today as it did nearly two decades ago.
Kicked off by a critical revisiting by one user over at r/movies, the masses quickly plunged into a debate surrounding The Village, a thriller film written and directed by Shyamalan, and starring the likes of Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, and Sigourney Weaver. The film follows the townsfolk of the titular village, who all live in fear of the creatures that lurk in the neighboring woodland.
A few users opined that most of the film’s detraction came from Shyamalan’s reputation for plot twists; some suggested that anticipating a twist takes one out of the rest of the movie, while others believed that the plot twist was simply not good.
The former claim was backed up by a responder who claimed to enjoy the film much more on their second viewing, largely due to how differently they engaged with the aforementioned twist.
We’ll be seeing M. Night Shyamalan again next year when his upcoming film Knock at the Cabin gets released in February, and while we’re hoping it falls into the category of Shyamalan films that Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense currently occupy, breaking even, as The Village did, would be an acceptable victory for a filmmaker coming off the back of Old.
