A list with a twist: Every M. Night Shyamalan film ranked
From The Sixth Sense to Knock At The Cabin, Shyamalan keeps making films and we keep hoping they're good
Film Features Shyamalan
M. Night Shyamalan is a director you can find at the top of just as many Best Movies Of All Time lists as Worst Movies Of All Time lists. The India-born auteur was initially one of the most mesmerizing mavericks in Hollywood. He stunned cinephiles with the surprise ending of The Sixth Sense, then doubled down on his now-signature twist storytelling by using Unbreakable to subvert the superhero genre.
However, as the last two decades have taught us, Shyamalan doesn’t always play well with others. His leap into big-budget, collaborative blockbusters gave us The Happening and The Last Airbender, stinkers so bad they’ve become punchlines for moviegoers worldwide. And with the writer/director now enjoying a renaissance courtesy of Split and Knock At The Cabin, ranking his back-catalog becomes a foray into both cinematic greatness and head-scratching disappointment. With that in mind, let’s relive the joy and the pain of M. Night Shyamalan’s work with our ranking of his films, from worst to best.
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Old was better than Glass. Sure, it had some lousy dialogue delivery, but it gets freaky rather than stranding us in a pointless talk-therapy session.
I’m planning on watching it tonight, looks interesting.
It gave us Midsize Sedan and that’s gotta count for something.
what’s his surname? Sedan?
Old deserves to be higher here purely for the calcium deficiency death scene, he was nasty for that one
One minute of legitimately freaky film making does not a non—gigantic-pile-of-shit make
I remember Glass being absolutely awful but I only watched it once. I suppose I should give it a rewatch with my expectations adjusted and see if its still rubs me so raw
I feel like you have to immediately follow Glass with something like Logan to wash the taste out.
I expected to see Old in the top five, not because it’s a great film or anything, but because it’s a very enjoyable B-movie and there are a lot of low cards in this deck. I felt like Shyamalan wrung just enough clever ideas out of the premise to satisfy me as a viewer, and I’m not going to get too hung up on the sense that it could have been an all-time classic in the right hands.I don’t see how anyone can possibly put The Happening that high up the list. It’s borderline unwatchable, and Old is a fun thriller.
I loved the hell out of Old. It was Shyamalan going full B-movie and it was wild. It would be an absolute cult classic right now had it not had the stigma of Shyamalan’s name.
Well, that or if it at least just got rid of the terrible, terrible final reveal. Leaving it as supernatural and unexplained would have been a trillion times better.
The fact that the beach makes people old is left supernatural and unexplained; he just reveals why they were put on the beach that makes people old.
Like I said, leaving it as supernatural, without the cartoonishly stupid and nonsensical pseudo-capitalist critique that served as the “explanation,” would have left it an okay movie rather than a fucking terrible one.
Like I said, they leave it as supernatural. Sorry they dissed capitalism 🙁
Nonsensical, childish, and laughable critiques of capitalism only help capitalism.
but at that point it seems odd that an explanation for the aging isn’t present. I’d rather they just totally left it alone. Plus this ending leaves us with the two kids-in-adult-bodies alive, and, what the hell is their life supposed to be now? They should have drowned, credits. Have you checked out the ending of the source material “Sandcastle”. That ending is sublime.
He just did the same thing with Knock At The Cabin, the book ending is waaaaay better. He seems to like aping other peoples stories and then majorly changing the ending into something bland and generic.Shyamalan needs to stay the hell away from the writer’s room. I otherwise love his stuff.
I agree with you that the film would work without explanation, but I liked the reveal. For starters, it wasn’t a trademark Shyamalan twist—it was more of a mystery with clues being dropped from the very beginning (the father notes in an early scene the resort is connected to a pharmaceuticals company, it’s clear that most of the guests have some sort of unique ailment, the resort packed them lots of food and it’s carefully packed to keep it preserved, etc). The reveal was also multi-faceted: not only was it a rather practical application of a patch of land with accelerated time, but it was a bit chilling in the good-intentioned evil of the scientists.
If I was going to write a movie where the twist was an evil spin on clinical trails, I’d do a little research into what clinical trials are to see if what I was proposing would make any sense even in a world where all clinical researchers are deeply evil. Night decided not to, and gave us a version of “evil scientists” that completely collapses into nonsense at any level of examination.
Well said. I really wish I turned off the movie like 5 minutes before the ending. It didn’t ruin it for me but I guess Old is a great recommendation for any anti-vaxxers in your life with an ending like that.
The fact that it’s stupid under researched “evil scientists” is perfect for anti-vaxxers since they’re also stupid. And of course science is evil.
It’s a real waste of being evil, probably billions of dollars, super elaborate mechanisms to prevent any missing persons investigations, etc…To generate data that is totally useless. Putting aside the lack of statistical power in testing things in single humans (n=1) with no controls, etc. THE ENTIRE POINT OF HUMAN TESTING IS TO DOCUMENT THINGS FOR REGULATORY AGENCIES. Like, that’s the only reason people do clinical trials at all. You would already have a decent idea that your drug had the general desired effect from animal testing. You only go through the expense of testing in humans because the government agencies need those receipts. That’s it. First you prove it’s safe, then that it does something, then that that something is worth it. Where would Old even fit into that model? This crap has no scientific value, even to “evil” scientists. It’s just evil with no point.There is zero utility in doing human trials whose data you can’t use in a public way. None. This is a profound misunderstanding of the thing they are trying to critique. And when you build a critique from ignorance, it is a failure.Rather than this absurdly baroque setup, it would be more expedient and only slightly less evil to just skip this entirely and act as though you got the result you wanted, anyway.
“There is zero utility in doing human trials whose data you can’t use in a public way. None.”It seemed clear to me that they used this protocol to covertly test pre-clinical agents and would then enroll the winners in conventional Ph1/2/3 trials (which would therefore succeed at a high rate). Dramatically reducing the number of failed trials would be worth a lot of money.
This nonsense would tell you nearly nothing you couldn’t get from animal studies, wouldn’t prevent trials failure, and, while this isn’t verifiable, I can’t imagine that this operation is any cheaper than a conventional trial done using a realistic infrastructure.It wouldn’t dramatically reduce the number of failed trials, because it wouldn’t provide data that would help avoid failed trials. Anecdotes don’t have any statistical power.It’s stupid.
Actually it would yield data that’s exactly the opposite of what animal studies provide: those offer large n values but short durations and limited applicability to human physiology. And while I agree that it is unverifiable, the “Old” trial involves and apparently profitable resort and minimal costs (a couple of observers with cameras). That sounds a lot cheaper than a traditional clinical trial…And of course it could provide data that would avoid a failed trial. If the agent is safe and shows some efficacy on a handful of people, the odds of eventual success are higher. If it kills the first person you try it on, it goes to the bottom of the list.The movie basically depicts a fast, cheap/profitable, covert “Phase zero” trial. If it wasn’t for pesky ethics, inconvenient laws, and the total absence of magic beach technology, I might be running one right now. 😉
Pretty sure you are overlooking the massive costs of murdering dozens of people at a time and keeping it quiet etc.If you were running one right now, you’d probably realize how fucking pointless it was. This wouldn’t provide you information that would help at all. You’d already have a good sense of efficacy from animal studies. This wouldn’t help avoid failures at at phase. At all. This wouldn’t predict safety or any of the actual efficacy and effectiveness endpoints you would use at the actual trial. And this explanation massively misunderstands the statistical and non-binary nature of how efficacy is determined anyway.It’s a take on clinical trials that only makes sense to people who don’t understand how clinical trials work or why they exist.
Old has the most “didn’t need an explanation but decided to explain the shit out of it” ending.
I’m debating adding it to my all-time favourites list but that ending is dumb.
“So bad it’s good” has never made sense to me.
I just watched it and I keep thinking “he did a pretty good job coming up with horrifying moments with this premise” like when the baby is crying and then you hear it stop crying.
Yeah that was a great moment — the point when I was all-in on the premise and thinking “Wait, Shyamalan found his mojo.” I didn’t really have a problem with the final reveal, either, although I totally see why that was a groaner for some people.
In theory I appreciated Glass for presenting itself as a superhero movie, then spending an hour interrogating the audience as to why they like superhero movies. In practice, it was pretty annoying.
(I’m an MCU fan) This is funny to me because in some respects Glass can be seen as an answer to people who outcry about superhero fatigue but watching Glass is its own kind of punishment and its very satisfactory that people who complain about superhero films would get an answer to that that they have to suffer through to watch. The irony is that why are they watching superhero films and then complaining about them in the first place why don’t they just watch something they enjoy? The joke is that these people are lousy and bitter and they absolutely deserve films like Glass lol.
It’s just such an eye-roll when people complain about superhero fatigue because they obviously don’t like those films but they continue to watch out of some obligation due to the popularity of those films. It’s some weird kind of FOMO I’ve never understood is people seem to think yelling at a film until it morphs into a film more suited to your preferences isn’t a great strategy. Something a few people in my life have complimented about me is that I’m really confident in things that I enjoy. Some of those things are mainstream (the MCU) some of those things are a bit obscure (like my love of Cosmic Ghost Rider) but people have told me that what they enjoy is how passionate I am about what I enjoy. So it baffles me to no end to learn that people actually spending time watching things they aren’t enjoying simply because those are mainstream so they feel an obligation? I guess a lot of people do that but man that is such sad sad way to live. Just do things you like! Christ. It’s not harder than me just simply stating it but so many people are so fucking caught up in “what’s popular”.
I don’t think The Karate Kid flopped did it? Financially I mean.
No, it was a smash hit, $176m domestic, $359m worldwide on a $40m budget.It was absolutely not a flop.
Pretty sure it did really well, actually. There’s nothing wrong with it per se, it just doesn’t have anywhere near the resonance of the original.
Well, there was one glaring thing wrong about it – there was no Karate involved. It was about learning Kung Fu.
There’s nothing right with it either. It was completely dull and uninteresting, but not bad and certainly not poorly made. It just had no stakes, no new ideas, and didn’t build or expand on any of the concepts of the original story.
Nope. $350M. I know it’s cool to hate on the Smith family, but don’t make shi+ up (or, do your research if you truly thought it flopped).
Move Signs up to #3 and it’s a good list. I’ve always thought Willis should have played the Gibson role to make it a nice sorta trilogy with 6S and Unbreakable.
I think it’s hard to top Gibson’s performance, however. For all of the focus on his plot twists, Shyamalan really is at his best in the scenes presenting how people react to growing dread, and Gibson is really good at showing a person trying to be a parent as he grows increasingly sure they’re all going to die. The scene of Gibson deciding that everyone gets the thing they most want for dinner always gets me. Plus, since Gibson’s such an asshole in his own domestic life, inhabiting a caring person on screen is a real transformation.
I’m not dissing Gibson at all. He’s great. And I think this role pre-dates his descent into finding out he’s a shit-heel. But I think Willis could have well handled this role in the same way you suggest too. Would have made for an interesting trilogy – really a quadrilogy with Glass I s’pose.
Finally someone speaks sense!
Who? Me? Nonsense.
I always thought Shyamalan had a better batting average than this. Seeing all his films in list form really draws attention to how half of them are terrible.
I really wanted to like Glass and on paper it should have ticked all my boxes. It just felt like the whole thing was filmed at a random warehouse and Bruce Willis was asleep the whole time. I liked the subversion of hinting at a big super hero brawl atop a skyscraper but the film never gets there. The twist was also pretty good but otherwise, blech.
Yeah, I wanted to have issues with this list but the biggest problem is that so many of his films are actually bad, for different reasons. Like, Lady in the Water is bad because of his massive ego, The Village is bad because the twist is such a groaner, The Happening is just all out bad, Glass is bad because it’s boring as hell, The Last Airbender is bad for all kinds of reasons…For such a celebrated filmmaker he’s really got about 50% awful movies.
Yeah it’s like the opposite of a Michael Bay or Zach Snyder where stuff tends to be bad for the same reasons, but if you’re prepared for it you can enjoy it for what it is. You can’t enjoy something that surprises you by being bad.
Yep, definitely has more than his fair share of movies that were obviously just paychecks to him. Just showed up for work, put in the bare minimum effort required and left.
Yeah even once you’re more than halfway through the commentary remains “this film pretty much sucked too.” His reputation is saved by a handful of winners.
Handful? He has two good films.I say three because I was a child when I saw Signs and the cups of water didn’t kill it for my child-brain. I’m aware I’m wearing rose-tinted glasses. My take on him now is that he strikes me as someone who annoyingly thinks they’re smarter than everyone. It’s embellished by the fact that he has so many twist endings under his belt that are just straight up illogical if you think about them too hard. He’s really good with suspense and frames beautiful images though. I guess his problem is ego cuz I think he would be great with a writer. It’s gotta be ego tho right? Considering he keeps writing terrible dialogue and makes cameos in his own films to explain twists. That has to be a big ego person right? His first film being his best film totally embellishes this all too.
Glass was right about the time Bruce started “starring” in any cheap project whos checked cleared. Given his diagnosis, I do wonder if part of Glasses bad performance was because it was a man dealing with the early signs of dementia.
I’ll go to bat for Glass. For the budget, knowing what Willis might have been going through at the time, I think it was a good ending to the unexpected saga.**SPOILERS**
The only thing that didn’t actually work for me was how Willis’ character was disposed of. After having just survived the water tank, the demise via puddle, didn’t ring true to me.
I saw glass on one of those crappy seat back screens on an airplane. So the experience was perhaps diminished. But yeah the worst thing for me was how Willis’s character just died in a puddle. I don’t think his character should have died. Then the sidekicks going off to expose some super secret org felt a bit lame for the last two minutes of the movie.
The Happening over The Village is nonsense. Go rewatch both.
Lady in the Water over The Village is very, very wrong also.
absolute insanity having Lady in the Water halfway up this list, it’s literally the worst movie I’ve ever seen. stuff like Glass and Old at the very least plays with some compelling ideas and great camerawork even if they aren’t great films, LITW is just absolute huffing-your-own-farts bullshit
This post tells me you have never watched The Last Airbender.
never have, never will. there is no movie in Ba Sing Se
I sure never wasted my time.
My wife and I both really enjoyed Lady in the Water and never understood the hate for it.
As much as I’ve liked some of Shyamalan’s films I have to admit to myself that like 2 or 3 of his films are among the worst films I’ve ever seen. That’s a pretty exclusive list a film really need to offend the fact that I committed time to watching it. The only film in the past few years that made it onto my worst films of all time list was The Matrix: Resurrections – fuck that movie.
I skipped so many of his films after The Village. I just saw and enjoyed the film “Old” but I was totally on auto-pilot when it was released/promoted simply due to the fact that I just tune out M Night Shymalan’s stuff now with how much bad will he’s generated for me.
The death knell for me was definitely Glass. That was the one where I was like “oh cool yah Ill give Shyamalan another shot”.
I will never, ever, forgive him for Glass.
I’m worried your threshold for implacable grudge-bearing is too low, or the amount of time and attention you devote to a movie you didn’t like 4 years ago is too high. (Full disclosure: I liked Glass, but “liked” is as far as my opinion of it stretches.)Who else is on your unforgivability list – y’know, for calibration purposes?
Its weird but my son has a real soft spot for After Earth. He loves that movie and my wife and I do not hate it. Honestly would watch it again over many higher rated movies on this list
i will go to my grave saying the following – the first 20 or so minutes of the happening is some of the best film ever made. Unfortunately the rest of the movie never really matches it.
Hard agree. The opening is really good, which just ends up highlighting how ridiculous the following story is.
This may be true…but I was so scarred by the rest of the movie that I can’t recall.The trailer was excellent.
Tangentially related: my wife and I had a few drinks and decided to watch I Still Know What You Did Last Summer a few years back, knowing it would be bad but curious anyway (we were on a late 90s slasher binge). The first 20 or so minutes, perhaps fueled by booze, I declared something like “idk, this movie actually seems to be pretty good. The rest of it must be pretty shitty to give it such crappy reviews.” Lo and behold the rest of it was shitty and my wife still makes fun of me for the declaration that I enjoyed the first 20 minutes of the movie.
I say that about Saving Private Ryan.
I’d agree, except for the “science” teacher coming off as pretty anti-science.
If you go into The Happening assuming it’s a comedy (and it might be) then it would be number 1
There’s nothing funny about eyeing lemon drink!
*Spoiler for The Village, at least for those planning to see it and don’t know.*It’s been awhile since I have seen it, but I recall thinking a better twist would have been that the monsters (which the village leaders made up to keep people away from the edges of the reserve) turned out to be real. There is one scene (I think) where BDH is walking and for no reason whatsoever, a monster shows up (and I think it turns out to be Adrien Brody dressed up for reasons I can’t remember or care about). The idea that the existence of these monsters became some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy would have been more interesting than the idea that the movie just takes place in the present because a bunch of rich people really hate modern life.
I’ll go to bat for The Village. It is one of the most tension filled movies I’ve ever seen. And it’s gorgeously shot. The scene with Howard waiting on the porch for Phoenix to arrive is still one of my all-time favorite movie moments. It’s so beautiful.I do wonder if it would have been better received if it hadn’t been his fourth movie wherein everyone went in expecting the twist. Or, yeah, if the twist hadn’t been what it was. It just didn’t work. But I still think almost everything around it is great.
Obviously, Shyamalan dug himself a hole as “the twist guy” which is unfortunate because I think that he *can* make decent movies. But there is definitely an issue when people go in expecting a mind-blowing twist because more often than not, twist endings are crappy because they are predictable, crappy because the readers followed the clues and figured it out early (side note: I will believe forever that GRRM got deflated when the internet figured out Jon Snow’s parentage before he could reveal it and that in part derailed him), crappy because the twist is out of nowhere, crappy because the twist is dumb, crappy because you expect a twist and there is none, or… once in a great while, a good twist where the clues were there but only made sense once you get to the end.
It’s been a bit since I’ve seen it but I really liked it.
I love The Village. I think it’s as good as anything he’s ever done. Maybe people were burnt out or too suspicious or unwilling to let themselves get carried away. I mean, he’s definitely made some duds, but the Village is really good!
This movie has its flaws, but 💯 on the porch scene.
I think The Village would’ve been much better if the twist was revealed much earlier and we knew all along it was Brody in the suit. It stops being a twist-upon-a-twist and instead turns into a bit of dread-filled dramatic irony.
I think M. Night has pigeon-holed himself into having a “twist” into his movies, to his own detriment. I sometimes wonder if The Village would have been more liked had it not been made by him. Going into every Shyamalan movie, the audience is going to be looking out for and trying to second-guess the twist, and often times the theory in the viewers mind will be more interesting or make more “sense” than the one he gives.
Concurrently, I was writing something to this effect. Agreed.
They expect that because people like you keep reinforcing that idea even though over half his movies don’t have a “twist.”
Even though, I myself, never started that I fell into that category, but wondered anecdotally what the reception of The Village would have been had he not directed it?Yet your comment and reaction reinforces my original statement that he may have pigeon-holed himself into that expectation.
Eh, at the point that Brody shows up in the costume, it’s already been revealed that it’s a costume, but then it backpedals to try and make you think, Wait, maybe there are monsters! That and MNS’s cameo as Ranger Exposition are the two things I don’t love about the movie.
I just watched Old and he did basically the same thing where he showed up in his own film to explain the twist. So cringey.
And pay to have every aircraft avoid the place. Even contrails.
Yeah, it’s not even a bad movie, never mind being as bad as The Happening or Signs.
Honestly, if they had limited it to “The elders are faking the monsters to control the kids” it would have been fine including “And it’s in modern times!” was the bridge too far.
Where people go wrong with MNS is in seeing his films primarily for the “twist” and/or thriller elements, when those are only secondary elements of his films (at least, the earlier ones). His films are built on themes/messages. The Village is…drumroll…a love story. The first half slowly unveils its intriguing setting – in the process quietly introducing us to the love pair that we didn’t know was the heartbeat of the film – and then out of nowhere that love comes under threat. Forget the modern era twist, and forget about the monsters, and remember that the entire film sets up a situation in which a blind young girl needs to make her way through the woods in order to save the boy she loves. The scene when she encounters the same fears we all experience at night in the woods – it doesn’t make any difference that the actual monsters aren’t real when the wild can still be just as frightening – puts monster threats to shame, and that she accomplishes her task essentially on pure willpower is outright magical once we mix in the film’s beautiful theme music.
The Village should not be ranked worse than Lady in the Water, because Lady in the Water was so, so bad, and The Village — as you said — did a lot of things very well.
Interesting list for a film maker that probably doesn’t deserve one, but it is an interesting discussion.-”Objectively, you could argue that this “horror” is Shyamalan’s worst film.” I do argue this. The Happening may be the worst movie I have ever seen. It wasn’t even cheesy enough to be fun, it was just dumb all the way around.-If The Happening wasn’t the worst movie I have ever seen, it was probably Glass. What dreck (especially following Split and Unbreakable, which are great).-My family encapsulates the nation wide divide over Signs. I really like the movie. My wife really hates the movie, and is still upset we did not walk out of the theater all these years later.-I cannot emphasize enough that I never solve mysteries or get twists in advance. I am really not very observant. But, somehow, I figured out the Sixth Sense twist half way through the movie (maybe I ate my Wheaties that day or something). I can see why people like it and I certainly do-but that movie gets boring fast if you guess what is going on. -Unbreakable is still one of my favorite super hero films. It is amazing that Unbreakable and the Happening can come from the mind of the same person.
Nah, the hot dog guy was totally worth my 90-whatever minutes.
LOL “We’re packing hotdogs for the road…….”Ok, you got me. Maybe there is more cheesy fun in there than I remembered.
I knew there was a twist going into Sixth Sense. Something made me suspect what it was when the restaurant scene began. I watched that scene with it in mind and was convinced by the end of it. I still enjoy it on rewatches. It’s got some good scares, and I like to see where the twist actually doesn’t make any sense (e.g. didn’t he think it was strange that the mom wasn’t responding to him at all before Cole came in the room?).
I was in my first year of law school and marriage, so I was in a bubble and had no idea what the movie was even about going in. I just noticed stuff that seemed off and suddenly the twist hit me-with a lot more movie to go.I cannot emphasize how rare that is. Usually people are explaining movies and such to me. But this dawned on me somehow. The movie does still have some good scares, as you say.
I didn’t know there was a twist ahead of time in The Sixth Sense or guess anything during the movie. I just remember thinking there was something off with the movie. At one point I thought maybe it was just poorly directed. haha By the end of course it made sense.I actually had a similar feeling watching The Force Awakens. It turns out that was just the directing, though.
I knew there was a twist in TSS, and even though I didn’t know what it was, I’ve seen enough movies** in my time to know that anytime the leading actor has a near-death experience and then a lot of weird things start happening… well, you know the rest. So, no surprise for me.
** Carnival of Souls, A Pure Formality, Final Approach, the Twilight Zone episode “The Hitch-Hiker” — and those are the just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
I am observant and figured out the twist in The Sixth Sense super early. I was thus extremely bored by the movie and learned to expect bad things from the director.
-My family encapsulates the nation wide divide over Signs. I really like the movie. My wife really hates the movie, and is still upset we did not walk out of the theater all these years later.With Signs, the positives generally outweigh the negatives to me. I have no problem considering it a good film, and it’s definitely rewatchable, which (to me) is the most important thing. There are great films that you couldn’t pay me to sit through a 3rd time (I’ll always watch twice to wash away or reaffirm the first impression) and there are objectively bad films I’ve watched a dozen times. I’m always in the mood to watch Signs. Take that for what it’s worth.At the same time, I can understand if someone loathes Signs because of the sappiness of the ending and/or the stupidity of the aliens’ fatal flaw. I can understand why those things could be hard to get past for some people.
Unbreakable is his best movie. No contest.
as well as a twist that makes the baddies from above seem like some of the dumbest villains ever put to film.I hate this oft-cited detail, as though human beings wouldn’t land on a planet that was 99% molten metal in order to harvest the oil/diamonds/copper/etc. that existed on the other 1%. Humans were a valuable resource for the aliens, and they came to harvest. It’s even specified in the film that the ships all actively avoided large bodies of water.
In my head-canon, they weren’t vulnerable to water, per se, but to microorganisms or something in the water.
There’s an argument that posits they’re vulnerable to *holy* water specifically, the twist being that they’re demons.This, obviously, would make the film even stupider.
Yes, that seems to be the case. The daughter kept complaining that the water was contaminated.
They’d wear some sort of protection, you’d think. Or at least not go blundering blindly into the molten metal and act surprised it hurt them.
Honestly, I imagine it as akin to how we humans do dangerous resource extraction: by sending low wage workers into a hostile environment while providing the bare minimum of required safety gear. The aliens we see are probably just the workers that are seen as expendable by the alien leadership.
Aw man I was a frontline worker doing grocery retail during COVID lockdown (back in school now ha ha) and wow what you said just triggered me. Remember when our governments literally did this in response to COVID? Something that doesn’t seem to be common information is that grocery workers actually weren’t eligible for CERB. That’s so messed up that was their way of making sure we didn’t just quit. I’ve never felt less like a human being before. Yay for being back in school! but also boo for how we treat low income people.
Also if water is so toxic to them, they wouldn’t be breathing the air. There’s plenty of water vapor in the air.
There is a mention from Rory’s Clukin’s character in the book he reads that says that aliens wouldn’t just invade, they’d send out scouts first. So the idea is that they’re not running around in protection so they can blend in easier.
Sure, we’d land on that planet, but we wouldn’t do so naked.
Oh fun, a slideshow, bye!
The number one film on the list should have been The Usual Suspects.
The Village is far from perfect but it’s a damn MASTERPIECE compared to Lady in the Water and The Happening. I don’t usually get riled by all these trivial lists but seeing this actually gave me a jolt. Ridiculous! I even liked Old better than those two and it is pretty damn weak. There are quite a few of these I haven’t seen. I really need to see The Visit and Split. With the rest, there is so much smoke that I have to assume there’s fire and I won’t like them at all.
Well… what a horrible career.
This made my laugh out loud. Thanks!
The Village deserves more respect and many of the other movies ranked above it on this list are quantifiably worse.
Unbreakable has aged so much better than Sixth Sense for me, but I would still put both in the top two. I suppose I can’t fault a movie that doesn’t have the same impact once you know the twist, but to me that only reflects better on Unbreakable. There’s a twist, but the film isn’t reliant on it and by that point in the film I don’t think it even really does much for the audience. Sixth Sense has some good scenes and great scares outside of the twist, but there’s just nothing like watching the first time. As others have said, it’s absolutely wild how the same person who did these two films did The Happening and Avatar.
Unbreakable has my all-time favourite two MNS scenes: the gun in the kitchen, and working out in the basement (and that top-down shot when Bruce lifts not only the over-loaded weight bar, but the camera’s POV itself and by extension the entire cinema, gives me chills every time).
Agree 💯 on those two scenes…and I could name a bunch more (e.g. porch scene in The Village, final car scene in The Sixth Sense, swing away scene in Signs).
Agreed, Sixth Sense is amazing, but truly most amazing on first watch, whereas Unbreakable holds up to many repeat viewings (as done Signs, at least for me – opinions about that one seem more mixed).
Husband and I both still love Sixth Sense, but we watched it all excited with the 10yo over Christmas break and his reaction was a resounding meh. He liked it, but remember how shocking that twist was? And the kid was literally like, oh he’s a ghost too. Damn jaded gen Alphas.
The movie Devil was left out of this list. Although it is not a very good one but better than the Last Airbender in my opinion.
The twist in Signs was just bad, but that movie’s theme was very affecting for me and the film also made jump half out of my skin a week later when I glimpsed a faceless store mannequin out of the corner of my eye.Shyamalan does some stuff really, really well. He just needs help (or a lack of arrogance) about the stuff he doesn’t do particularly well.
People being surprised Glass was awful amuses me because everything about Split indicated it would be. Split is ridiculous.
I am consistently amazed that anyone liked The Visit. From the annoying “rappity-rappin’” kid to the horrible performances, it was one of the worst pieces of garbage I can remember seeing in the last 15 years. I would kill for the chance to have a “Shyamalan twist” and go back to warn myself to not see this movie. This YouTuber pretty much summed up my burning hatred for this movie:
I’m feeling that Knock isn’t going to age well. I’m already seeing reviews that reference something I noticed as well– there’s an underlying message that the Supreme Being wants to sacrifice a gay couple to avoid the Apocalypse. I don’t feel that this was intended, but it’s getting noticed and commented on. Not the best message during a time of brutal anti-LGBTQ legislation.
Here’s the thing though, Shyamalan’s movies weren’t commercial failures, they were commercial successes. There’s this story that goes around that because most of his movies sucked and everyone talked about it that they must have lost money. They didn’t. Many of them were fantastically profitable. The Happening made money. Signs and The Village made tons of money. The Sixth Sense, Split, The Visit, Unbreakable, and Glass made tons and tons of money. The only outright dud financially was Lady in the Water. After Earth was probably painful, but not a killer.Other directors would love to have Shymalan’s track record, financially. That’s why he kept getting jobs, even while the movies sucked. They were critical failures, but not commercial ones.
If I remember correctly the incredible twist in The 6th Sense is that the guy we just saw get killed is dead.For fuck’s sake people.
I really hated the Village when it came out but it’s grown on me more over the years. It definitely shouldn’t have been so low on the list. And they of course should’ve made monsters end up being real. Especially since at least one of the scenes with them is after the reveal anyway.
It takes a listicle like this to remind me just how bad Shyamalan is. It begs the question: Has a worse filmmaker ever had such an indelible place in the industry? He’s carved out a niche for himself and is literally the namesake of a piece of film lingo.When you look at the totality of his career, you realize how lucky he got early and milked the hell out of it for the next 20 years, basically creating his own genre in the process. He occupies his own unique space in the media universe in that he continues to churn out fairly formulaic films that follow the same general approach, yet all get fairly well marketed and people see them, even if it’s just to complain about them.I will say this, though. Every one of those films has at least one redeeming quality that isn’t just an actor’s performance (which usually is despite his best efforts). He does something right in every film (except The Last Airbender). Whether it’s the framework of the story, the way it’s shot, the lighting, etc. He’ll always hit right on something, or a few things, but a flaw or flaws just become too much for the film to be salvageable.
Knock at the Cabin looks dumb to me but I just watched Old last night and I enjoyed that one a lot (except the dumb explanation at the end).
I used to think of M Night Shymalan as some prolific director when I was a kid but looking at his filmography now most of it is a bag of shit. Signs really stands out to me (I was a child so the cups of water thing didnt bother me) I really liked Signs….. but wow, The Happening, The Village, and Glass are among my least favourite films.
He seems like the type of person who thinks he’s smarter than everyone. I don’t think I would like this man.
I read the book it’s based on. It’ll be interesting to see the direction he takes with it.
10. The Village : “However, this isn’t a Happening-level misfire,”7. The Happening.Indeed.
This list has flaws. Unbreakable is his best, but I’m not surprised Sixth Sense got it. But The Event as 7th?! That movie should be ranked like 3,000th. It was horrible.
The Village should have rated higher, I agree with everyone on that. But The Event even MAKING the list is an affront to movie taste at all. C’mon Matt!
I’ll always defend Shyamalan…I’m not quite a super fan, but close. (Although to be fair, I haven’t seen the last/bottom 3 movies on this list.)I have some issues with this list. No Shyamalan list that fails to put The Happening dead last can be correct.(Yes, it should even rank lower than Old, which was also not great.)The Village may not have had an ingenious twist, but it had great moments and should be ranked higher, as others have commented.I’m disappointed to see The Lady in the Water. Read the book The Man Who Heard Voices to get a whole new perspective on this movie: https://mazon.com/Man-Who-Heard-Voices-Shyamalan/dp/1592402135/ref=sr_1_1?crid=23OLDEAG1I7The Visit was good and Split was decent, but no way should these be ranked higher than Signs.My Top 3 Review:
It’s hard to argue with The Sixth Sense as #1; it’s one of my favorite all-time movies and brilliantly acted and directed all around. I know the twist but could still watch this movie again and again and enjoy every scene. I didn’t like Unbreakable upon first watch (I think Bruce Willis trying to cheat on his wife in the first scene turned me off), but this movie has incredible depth and more great performances. But all that being said, I’d have to push for Signs as #1. It is so skillfully put together with the flashbacks, so movingly told with superb acting subtlety (and this is someone who does NOT like Mel Gibson). I don’t think I could ever get tired of watching this movie.
Question: Is Devil not considered a Shyamalan movie? He is credited with story on that one (and I kind of liked it, although it was a single viewing awhile back).https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1314655/
I just avoid anything M. has done and ever will do, it’s, as my uncle used to say, “It’s not worth the aggravation!”. Every single movie of his I’ve seen has either been terrible (IMHO almost every one of them), or had some annoying as hell plot twist or the ending was kind of a “How the hell do we end this?”, and coming up with the lamest of lame crap endings. A bunch (Like 10)of us from work went to see “Unbreakable” soon after it came out. All but one of us, who just loved it, were at least disappointed in it, and several of us just hated it. I was pretty well pissed off I paid to see it, and bought some way overpriced (And stale!)snacks and drinks on top of the ticket. At least I didn’t buy any popcorn, which is just awful, and expensive. Lots of my boss and I looking at each other, and rolling our eyes at what was happening on screen. Just thinking about “Unbreakable” still pisses me off a little bit. The attention “Glass” got when it was released kind of made me laugh. No, I haven’t seen it, it will be on cable sometime and I will watch it, I somehow think it might be like “Dune” (The old one) that sucks me in every single time it’s on. It’s like watching car wreck videos, you can’t believe some of the stuff people do, so you have to watch them. “Dune” is like that to me. Muad’Dib my ass.
Never understood why viewers were surprised by the twist in “Sixth Sense.” It was just so obvious to me that either Malcolm or Cole was dead. We just had to sit through 100 minutes of standard ghost story tropes to discover which one.Hugely overrated movie imho.