i've talked shit about him before. after all, i do think he's a gifted filmmaker who made 1 very good movie, another pretty good movie, and still another film that is good thru its first half. his last 2 efforts were execrable. and i think why fans, especially genre fans, get so pissed off with m. night shyamalan is not because of his reportedly huge ego, but because he promises so much and can even sometimes make good on those promises. often the promises get broken. shyamalan is good at creating dread and fear. he does have an eye and a wonderful ability at creating suspense. even his turd film the village had a moment or 2 of very taut suspense. but man the ending of that film was a huge waste of time and talent that i felt like a sucker and i was very pissed off for being had.
just the same, i think i'm gonna see his newest film the happening and perhaps give shyamalan another chance. the setup is good; the plot concerns nature striking back at the malignancy of our human species. the trailers have my attention. so far the reviews have been damning and rise a bit to a faint praise. below is the red-band trailer of the film, which means it is a bit more graphic. i worry that all the good parts are in the trailers and the film pads out to a sermon which killed the otherwise very watchable signs for me.
i mean shyamalan is interested in the same subjects that fascinate me: the paranormal, ufos, comic books and so forth. his movies are packed with all that so at least on the surface i should like his movies. yet his latter work becomes too hoary and is thickened with some quasi-mystical shit. not that the mystic is what i abhor but that shyamalan's films become preachy and therefore cheapjack works. so here's to hoping he's made a good or even okay film.
in case you're wondering i consider shyamalan's best film to be the sixth sense; the next best is unbreakable, even if that does get a bit silly in its myth-making; while the 1st half of signs is terrific genre fair, the second half becomes a goofy sermon.
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I was gonna ask which two you thought were good, and that's exactly what I would have said. I actually really really like UNBREAKABLE. Just a great pacing to that one. Supposedly the idea was that it would be a trilogy but because it didn't do so well they dropped the idea pretty quickly-- which I think sux.
And the Sixth Sense is very good. People seem to want to dismiss it now, even though everyone at the time of its release was shitting themselves with praise. Whatever, it's still very good, even when knowing the "twist" ending.
Everything else he's done is SHIT. Especially LADY IN THE WATER-- defintely one of the worst fucking movies ever. In that one there's a display of his egotism in that he casts himself as the writer that is writing the one book that changes THE WHOLE WORLD for the better in the future-- but it won't have any impact until after his death. As though he thinks of himself as the genius that isn't appreciated in his time.
Bah!
He stinks. Though I'm tempted to watch his new one, too. I won't go to the theater for it, though.
I agree completely with your assessment of Shyamalan's output, though I don't seem to like Unbreakable as much as other people do, and think Lady in the Water is SO incredibly bad, it's actually quite brilliant to behold in all its colossal ineptitude.
a co-worker just saw the flick and told me she liked it but it wasn't a work of genius nor was it very good. still, i'm interested in seeing it. perhaps, shyamalan should concentrate on small-budget flicks and try collaborating with other writers and such. or go out and out for exploitation. just only he should leave the preaching at home.
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