The films of M Night Shya­malan – ranked

Since the phe­nom­e­nal suc­cess of his break­out fea­ture, The Sixth Sense, turned the young direc­tor into an overnight house­hold name, M Night Shya­malan has grown into one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing auteurs cur­rent­ly work­ing. Though he was once tout­ed as the next Amer­i­can mas­ter, Shyamalan’s rep­u­ta­tion has soured over the past two decades: Unbreak­able, Signs and The Vil­lage were each greet­ed with a col­lec­tive shrug by the crit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty, while The Lady in the Water was per­ceived as a plunge into total self-parody.

The director’s brief for­ay into big-bud­get block­buster sto­ry­telling fared even worse. After Earth was large­ly laughed off as noth­ing more than a show­case for the mea­gre act­ing chops of its ado­les­cent lead Jaden Smith and The Last Air­ben­der is still wide­ly con­sid­ered to be one of the worst films to ever be pro­duced with­in the stu­dio sys­tem. The very artis­tic traits which were once cham­pi­oned as the mark­ers of a sin­gu­lar cre­ative voice – the slow pac­ing, the hushed sound design, the pared-down per­for­mances, the per­vad­ing atmos­phere of por­tent, the obses­sion with fairy tale and Goth­ic imagery – were increas­ing­ly dis­re­gard­ed as the pre­ten­tious extrav­a­gances of a cre­ative­ly bank­rupt direc­tor tread­ing water.

Although the release of Split marked a minor resur­gence of crit­i­cal good­will, a title card read­ing ​‘from the mind of Shya­malan’ is still more like­ly to inspire deri­sive tit­ters than gen­uine excite­ment. For many, the down­ward tra­jec­to­ry of Shyamalan’s career is a cau­tion­ary tale of a direc­tor who peaked too young and crum­bled under the weight of out­sized expec­ta­tions. In the eyes of this writer, how­ev­er, Shya­malan is the real deal; an idio­syn­crat­ic, trag­i­cal­ly under­val­ued film­mak­er whose tri­umphs vast­ly out­weigh his fol­lies. To cel­e­brate the release of Glass, we’ve revis­it­ed and ranked all 13 of his fea­ture films. Read the full list below, then let us know your per­son­al favourites at @LWLies

Though rough around the edges, Shyamalan’s deeply per­son­al debut fea­ture, Pray­ing with Anger, is clear­ly the work of an ambi­tious young voice express­ing a unique cin­e­mat­ic vision. The same can­not be said for his fol­low-up, Wide Awake, a schmaltzy com­ing-of-age dram­e­dy pro­duced by the short-lived fam­i­ly divi­sion of Mira­max studios.

The film cen­tres on Josh Beal, a Catholic school­boy who begins to ques­tion the exis­tence of God fol­low­ing the death of his beloved grand­fa­ther. Con­cep­tu­al­ly, this may sound like prime Shya­malan mate­r­i­al, though in exe­cu­tion it couldn’t be far­ther from the bril­liance of his lat­er explo­rations of test­ed faith.

Rely­ing on cutesy sit­com-style gags, an over­bear­ing score and for­mu­la­ic char­ac­ter arcs, Wide Awake packs the emo­tion­al punch of an after­school spe­cial. Absent is the rav­ish­ing visu­al panache that Shya­malan would devel­op in his lat­er films, instead this feels like it was direct­ed on autopilot.

Writ­ten, direct­ed and self-fund­ed by Shya­malan while he was still study­ing at NYU, Pray­ing with Anger is a scrap­py debut that has been large­ly for­got­ten out­side of a few hard­core auteurist cir­cles. It’s not hard to see why, as it is marred by many of the defi­cien­cies you may expect from a stu­dent film. The act­ing is stilt­ed, the audio track varies in qual­i­ty from scene to scene, and there is a lot of lazy blocking.

Yet there’s a ram­shackle charm to this auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal tale of an Indi­an Amer­i­can col­lege stu­dent (played by Shya­malan him­self) who, at the request of his moth­er, trav­els to his native coun­try to take part in a year-long exchange pro­gram, only to be shocked by the extent to which he has strayed from his cul­tur­al roots. Shyamalan’s sig­na­ture pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with spir­i­tu­al devo­tion, cul­tur­al dis­con­nec­tion and famil­ial bonds are all present in a rough form, and it’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see these play out with­in the con­text of a light dramedy.

Although it is far from the colos­sal, world-shat­ter­ing artis­tic dis­as­ter its rep­u­ta­tion may have you believe, Shyamalan’s big screen adap­ta­tion of the hit Nick­elodeon car­toon is one hell of a mess. Shyamalan’s strengths lie in his lean visu­al sto­ry­telling, but the task of con­dens­ing the plot of an entire sea­son of tele­vi­sion into a 90-minute fea­ture forces him to devote long stretch­es of the run­time to dull explana­to­ry nar­ra­tion and expo­si­tion-heavy dia­logue scenes.

The tone is wild­ly incon­sis­tent in the worst pos­si­ble way, and the charis­ma-free lead cast recite their lines as if they have no idea what they’re talk­ing about. Yet, there are so many flash­es of inspired aes­thet­ic splen­dour that it fells mis­guid­ed to write The Last Air­ben­der off as a total fail­ure. The com­bat sequences in par­tic­u­lar stand out for their bal­let­ic chore­og­ra­phy and some cre­ative use of CGI to realise the manip­u­la­tion of the elements.

Released in late 2002, Signs was the film which marked the begin­ning of Shyamalan’s mid-career fas­ci­na­tion with the sen­sa­tion of trau­ma and anx­i­ety that took over the nation in the after­math of the ⁹⁄₁₁ attacks. Although his lat­er films would go on to tack­le these themes on a grander scale, Signs takes a decid­ed­ly inti­mate approach, zero­ing in on a sin­gle rur­al fam­i­ly who find their tak­en-for-grant­ed sense of secu­ri­ty desta­bilised by the mys­te­ri­ous threat of an encroach­ing alien force.

Rather than reveal­ing the aliens out­right from the get-go, Shya­malan devotes the bulk of the film to care­ful­ly build­ing ten­sion through the pow­er of sug­ges­tion, giv­ing us only brief glimpses of shad­ows in hall­ways, reflec­tions on knives, and eyes peer­ing through win­dows as the shad­owy beings increas­ing­ly intrude upon the domes­tic space. Because of this, Signs seems less inter­est­ed in the invaders than the very notion of inva­sion itself, pow­er­ful­ly tap­ping into the zeit­geist of its period.

At the core of Shyamalan’s endear­ing­ly ludi­crous tale of narfs, scrunts and tar­tu­tics is a gen­uine belief in the rad­i­cal pow­er of sto­ry­telling: to fos­ter empa­thy, to break down inter­per­son­al bar­ri­ers, to heal emo­tion­al wounds, to lead the way to redemp­tion. The Lady in the Water spends its open­ing act intro­duc­ing a large ensem­ble cast of broad stereo­types (a brain­dead body­builder, a bick­er­ing Jew­ish cou­ple, a group of aim­less young ston­ers), who each live a shut-off life in their own cor­ner of the cen­tral apart­ment complex.

As super­in­ten­dent Paul sets about unrav­el­ling a cen­turies-old rid­dle that will hold the key to releas­ing a strand­ed mer­maid-like crea­ture known as Sto­ry, he must draw on the unique tal­ents of every one of the building’s res­i­dents – the very idio­syn­crasies which ini­tial­ly marked them as fig­ures of ridicule. The strict divi­sions that once defined the cen­tral hous­ing project grad­u­al­ly break down – spa­tial­ly, cul­tur­al­ly, emo­tion­al­ly – and a har­mo­nious, mul­ti­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ty is established.

Eco­nom­ic, nar­ra­tive­ly effi­cient, and com­posed in gor­geous ​‘scope images by cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Wol­gang Suschitzky, Shyamalan’s mar­vel­lous work on After Earth ele­vates the film far above its nepo­tis­tic ori­gins as a Will Smith-pro­duced star­ring vehi­cle for his son Jaden. Although Shya­malan was brought onto the project late in the game, he acts as more than a gun-for-hire, using this pre-exist­ing mate­r­i­al as a ves­sel to explore his recur­ring inter­ests in father-son dynam­ics and envi­ron­men­tal ruin.

In essence, it’s a sim­ple sur­vival­ist sto­ry with a sci-fi twist: in the dis­tant future, a space­craft crash­es on the sur­face of a depop­u­lat­ed Earth, which was aban­doned after mass pol­lu­tion ren­dered the nat­ur­al world inhos­pitable to human life, leav­ing the only two sur­vivors strand­ed with­in a hos­tile, hyper-real wilderness.

On a pure­ly visu­al lev­el, After Earth con­tains some of the most impres­sive mate­r­i­al of Shyamalan’s career, as he ful­ly imag­ines an intri­cate alien eco-sys­tem, cre­at­ed through a rich­ly tex­tured com­bi­na­tion of nat­ur­al land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy and imag­i­na­tive CGI enhancement.

Shyamalan’s first mas­ter­piece and the fea­ture which first intro­duced the world to his dis­tinc­tive style: a patient, metic­u­lous for­mal­ism which draws on ele­ments of clas­si­cal Hol­ly­wood, mod­ern Euro­pean art cin­e­ma and ​’50s B‑movies.

The final twist has become a cul­tur­al touch­stone so deeply ingrained into the pop­u­lar con­scious­ness that even those who haven’t seen The Sixth Sense are famil­iar with it – but the rev­e­la­tion that Bruce Willis’ Mal­colm has been dead for the bulk of the film func­tions not only as a shock­ing nar­ra­tive sleight-of-hand but a rev­e­la­tion that com­pli­cates The Sixth Sense’s the­mat­ic core and recasts every­thing we’ve seen before in a new, melan­cholic new light.

Although broad­ly cat­e­gorised as a hor­ror film, The Sixth Sense eschews con­ven­tion­al scare tac­tics in favour of a more clas­si­cal, slow-build approach, with Shyamalan’s rig­or­ous for­mal­ism main­tain­ing a sus­tained atmos­phere of dread which crescen­dos into a final act which packs the oper­at­ic punch of a grand tragedy.

The Hap­pen­ing, Shyalaman’s most pecu­liar genre project, recon­fig­ures the para­noid sen­si­bil­i­ties of atom­ic age genre flicks for the era of cli­mate change and mass envi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion. The film hinges on a dar­ing for­mal con­ceit that is, depend­ing on who you ask, a major mis­step or a stroke of genius: the threat at the cen­tre of the nar­ra­tive isn’t a phys­i­cal being but invis­i­ble, intan­gi­ble neu­ro­tox­ins being emit­ted by the nat­ur­al world.

In this writer’s eyes, the prospect of the very land we rely on to sur­vive inex­plic­a­bly becom­ing unable to sus­tain human life is fun­da­men­tal­ly ter­ri­fy­ing, and now, 11 years after its release, its envi­ron­men­tal­ist mes­sage seems even more urgent.

Shya­malan reminds us that our lives are depen­dent on envi­ron­men­tal stim­uli – the water we drink, the trees that puri­fy our air, the dirt which fer­tilis­es our crops – and imag­ines the large-scale extinc­tion event that may occur unless we put a stop to wide­spread despoliation.

Fol­low­ing his stint in the realm of the big-bud­get block­buster, Shya­malan returned to his stripped-back hor­ror routes with The Vis­it, a claus­tro­pho­bic chiller which man­ages to fash­ion a rich explo­ration of famil­ial rela­tions and doc­u­men­tary ethics from a hokey found-footage hor­ror premise.

As he did in The Sixth Sense before it, Shya­malan draws on child­hood feel­ings of lone­li­ness, anx­i­ety and incom­pre­hen­sion of the adult world to cre­ate sus­pense and pathos in equal, intox­i­cat­ing mea­sure. This time, the phys­i­cal ail­ments of old age are fil­tered through a child’s restrict­ed, uncom­pre­hend­ing point-of-view, trans­form­ing fair­ly com­mon­place infir­mi­ties – demen­tia, brit­tle bones, incon­ti­nence– into the stuff of horror.

Found-footage movies have a bad ten­den­cy to use their gim­mick as an excuse to be for­mal­ly slop­py, but Shya­malan finds a wit­ty workaround by mak­ing his pro­tag­o­nist a pre­co­cious wannabe film­mak­er (and cheeky direc­tor sur­ro­gate) who explic­it­ly reflects on the impor­tance of care­ful film craft.

The notion of a claus­tro­pho­bic thriller cen­tred on a gang of young girls held cap­tive by a man with dis­so­cia­tive per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der may sound inher­ent­ly prob­lem­at­ic, but Shya­malan mas­ter­ful­ly sub­verts view­er expec­ta­tions to craft a deeply emphat­ic study of the after-effects of intense per­son­al trauma.

The film first sets up an arche­typ­i­cal good-ver­sus-evil struc­ture com­mon to the Amer­i­can B‑movie tra­di­tion it draws on, but then instead of fol­low­ing this genre mod­el through to its expect­ed clash-of-the-ele­ments con­clu­sion, Split col­laps­es such sim­plis­tic dis­tinc­tions to reveal the true vil­lain of the piece to not be any sin­gle char­ac­ter, but the very con­cept of abuse itself.

Rather than sim­ply cod­i­fy­ing Kevin as a mon­strous Oth­er because of his ill­ness, Shya­malan delves deep into his inner life and finds a vast reser­voir of pal­pa­ble sor­row; in doing so, Split inter­ro­gates the mech­a­nisms by which the most vul­ner­a­ble in soci­ety are dehu­man­ised by pop­u­lar genre fare, thus com­pound­ing their sense of alienation.

Admit­ted­ly, it might seem a lit­tle ear­ly to be plac­ing Glass in the upper ranks of Shyamalan’s fine body of work, but this delight­ful­ly deranged con­clu­sion to the Eas­trail 177 tril­o­gy is clear­ly major. One of the most sur­pris­ing tricks Shya­malan ever pulled was to reveal Split to be the sec­ond instal­ment in a planned series only dur­ing its clos­ing moments, mak­ing us realise only in ret­ro­spect that we had just wit­nessed a qua­si-sequel to 2000’s Unbreakable.

Though, despite its struc­tur­al engage­ment with the dynam­ics of con­tem­po­rary block­buster world-build­ing, any­body expect­ing this final chap­ter to be a vio­lent con­fronta­tion between Shyamalan’s three mod­ern day titans (David Dunn, Kevin Crumb and Mr Glass) is bound to be con­found­ed by a piece that’s far more idio­syn­crat­ic, as the con­flict instead plays out as claus­tro­pho­bic psychodrama.

Styl­is­ti­cal­ly, Glass devi­ates quite rad­i­cal­ly from the mut­ed, earthy tones of pre­vi­ous instal­ments in the series, instead embrac­ing a mode of hyper-real expres­sion­ism that more close­ly resem­bles the pulpy art style of com­ic book fic­tion. Blocks of pri­ma­ry colour dom­i­nate com­po­si­tions, sil­hou­ettes are thrown across cor­ri­dors, and off-kil­ter cam­era angles abound. It’s a damn auda­cious way to stage a super­hero pic­ture, and a reminder that there is still a great deal of poten­tial left in the genre.

This lan­guid, self-reflex­ive enquiry into the nature of com­ic book mythol­o­gy and its func­tion in wider soci­ety finds Shya­malan at the height of his pow­ers as a genre movie aes­thete. The open­ing act in par­tic­u­lar is a mas­ter­class of visu­al econ­o­my, show­ing us the two major acci­dents that will hang over the rest of the nar­ra­tive like an oppres­sive weight in an ellip­ti­cal series of long-takes which point­ed­ly omit the actu­al moments of violence.

Unbreak­able is also struc­tured around one of Shyamalan’s most inspired con­cep­tu­al con­ceits: it’s a super­hero ori­gin sto­ry that only reveals itself as such in its final scene. Until this dénoue­ment, the film presents itself as a dual char­ac­ter study of two men who deal with hor­ren­dous trau­ma in very dif­fer­ent ways: Mr Glass retreats into the fan­ta­sy realm of super­heroes and neat nar­ra­tive threads, con­vinc­ing him­self that every event in his life has been pre­de­ter­mined for a vital rea­son; Dunn, on the oth­er hand, favours a cop­ing strat­e­gy of avoid­ance, refus­ing to address his phys­i­o­log­i­cal pain.

By strip­ping the film of spec­ta­cle and instead focus­ing on inti­mate dra­ma and quo­tid­i­an moments, Unbreak­able takes many of the moral issues that lie at the cen­tre of the camp-and-mask mythos and sub­jects them to intense philo­soph­i­cal scrutiny.

In many ways, The Vil­lage acts as the ugly flip­side to Signs: Signs engages with the col­lec­tive hys­te­ria fol­low­ing the ⁹⁄₁₁ attacks by offer­ing a re-assur­ing mes­sage of hope, while The Vil­lage reflects on the ugly neo-con­ser­vatism and xeno­pho­bia that infect­ed Amer­i­can life in its after­math. From the van­tage point of 2019, it is hard to view the faith Signs places in the US gov­ern­ment to re-estab­lish order and bring peace back to the nation as any­thing oth­er than naïve, while The Village’s vision of the gov­ern­ment as a hyp­o­crit­i­cal force eager to exploit pub­lic fear to serve its own impe­ri­al­is­tic inter­ests seems as vital as ever.

By fab­ri­cat­ing mys­te­ri­ous evil-doers who dwell just out­side of the vil­lage lim­its, the elders are able to main­tain total author­i­ty over a fright­ened, pli­able and cul­tur­al­ly igno­rant pop­u­la­tion under the guise of main­tain­ing pub­lic safe­ty and uni­ty. If that sounds famil­iar, it’s because The Vil­lage is the fiercest cri­tique of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion ever put to screen, a fear­less expose of the mech­a­nisms by which the neo-colo­nial ​‘war on ter­ror’ height­ened the unease of the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion with the aim of forc­ing them into acqui­es­cence and, ulti­mate­ly, strip­ping them of their civ­il liberties.

Pierc­ing, intel­li­gent and gen­uine­ly hor­ri­fy­ing, The Vil­lage is one of the mas­ter­works of 20^th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can cin­e­ma, and it stands as Shyamalan’s great­est achieve­ment to date.