So from the title you can probably already guess at least half of what this blog post will be about: donkey punching. More specifically: How M. Night Shyamalan has donkey punched the modern film. But the second half of the title suggests that I'm also going to write some long winded explanation about how it is in fact our fault, the viewing audience, that Mr. Shyamalan keeps making terrible films. Both are correct, this post will be about M. Night Shyamalan and how the movie-going audience created the monster that he has become.
I don't believe I have to give too much explanation as to who M. Night Shyamalan is. He's the genius that made The Six Sense and Unbreakable. He's also the guy who shat out The Happening. Many people regard Shyamalan as a "one-trick pony" for his continuing use of the "twist" ending in his movies. (Citation: Wikipedia bitches!)But see, people call him a one-trick pony without acknowledging that we wanted the same trick from him time and time again. Hell, we still want that trick from him, if anything to make fun the new and shitty ways he can pull a twist out of his ass.
Follow my train of thought on this as I take you through the films he is most famous for. The Six Sense: introduced the signature twist ending to the public. It's so well known for it's twist ending that people use it to satirize movie spoilers by telling friends who haven't seen it that (SPOILER ALERT) Bruce Willis was dead the entire time. Seriously though, if you haven't seen it you may need to see a doctor.
Let's move on to Unbreakable. It has yet another twist ending that I won't ruin for you because you should actually see this film, it's one of his best. So the count was now at two movies in a row that featured a twist ending that we enjoyed, although we liked The Six Sense's twist ending more than Unbreakable's. This movie also introduced us to M. Night's essay-styled movie writing that he would later use in Lady in the Water. However Mr. Shyamalan writes, the audiences of the world wanted to see more twist endings.
Then M. Night did Signs and the shit officially hit the fan. Now Shyamalan's career wasn't ruined here and the movie can still be regarded as decent in the very least. But this was the film that started to make the twist ending seemed tired. It was also the film that put a face to the directors name when he starred as the movies Deus Ex Machina (something he would later do in Lady in the Water, but I'll get to that when I get there.) Anyways, if you like aliens and so forth, this movie was probably good for you. If you don't, it was probably the movie that did it in for you with M. Night.
The Village was the movie that did it for me. It was clearly made so that M. Night could pander to the audience that wanted more and more scary films with twist endings. For me however, this movie fell short. I hated The Village, the twist wasn't as supernatural as his previous twists. Some people really liked The Village BECAUSE everything in the movie could fit within a realistic world. But me, not so much.
Lady in the Water, I officially lost faith in Shyamalan with this movie. The narrative came off like he was writing an essay about fantasy and he starred in his own film as a very important character. This bothers me with directors because, unless you're making a comedy, you really shouldn't star in your own movies because it just seems like you're trying to force your supposed "acting skills" upon us when you're known for your directing talents. Either star in a film or direct it, don't do both simultaneously.
The Happening, nothing happened in this film. The wind was a villain or something and John Leguizamo kills himself a quarter's way through the film which royally pissed me off. I like John Leguizamo, he needs to be in more movies and not get killed off.
As you can see, M. Night has clearly descended into madness with his film making. He tried to escape this madness by making The Last Airbender. A movie he pretty much did for his kids which, if you ask me, is a very kind thing for him to do. The Last Airbender was his attempt to break free of the one-trick pony stereotype and people hated the film. But see, we hated the film for a different reason than usual. It didn't have a twist ending and it wasn't scary, but it did try to fit one season of a TV series about children into a two hour movie. The movie was doomed from the start. But then M. Night Shyamalan worked on a project that is hopefully the beginning of his redemption.
I am talking about Devil, of course. A movie that was laughed at when the trailer was shown (seriously, YouTube this stuff, people were cracking up), but then pretty much enjoyed by almost everyone who watched it. Now granted, it's not the best film out there and can pretty much be regarded as a solid B film. But it was enjoyable all the same.
So what does this say about M. Night Shyamalan's career? I say we don't give the guy enough credit. I'll be apologetic here and say that M. Night Shyamalan can be a good director/writer/hell, even actor, if we just let him be. He's written and directed good films, so obviously he has that in him and if he stays to breif cameos that don't really move the plot along and are just cameos, then he may be regarded as an okay actor.
I'm going to leave you with this. Let M. Night Shyamalan do his thing. No matter how bad he gets, he seems to at least genuienly care about his movies and take them seriously, he's no Ed Wood (look him up) or George Lucas. I think we can all agree that he's better than Uwe Boll. If Shyamalan doesn't make a good movie within the next 3 films then he is truly a terrible film maker. But in order for him to make a good film, we have to let him. Stop expecting "scary" films with twist endings and if he keeps making him, then clearly he's a terrible person and should retire from hollywood. That's all I have to say about that, thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed.
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