Let's discuss my most hated filmmaker of all time, M. Night Shyamalan. I actually want to see everything he makes because his films really are so ridiculously bad in completely absurd ways. Here are his films given my point system 0 - 10, 0 being "Elizabethtown" and 10 being "The Fall"
Avatar: The Last Airbender- 7 points (WITH RIFFTRAX ONLY), 3 without rifftrax.
I am completely mystified why somebody thought it was a good idea to put this much money behind Shyamalan after his last two disasters. The money at least shows in some really awesome fighting sequences and special effects. But Shyamalan reigns in his trademark style of human interaction that makes me wonder if he's ever had a human conversation. The actors seem like they are trying to behave like Anime cartoons.... which of course just makes viewing it seem like you're watching some kind of training video for a cosplay living community. Every statement made is delivered like it is the single most dire piece of dialogue ever spoken. It's exhausting. The main character is played by Noah Ringer who makes Jake Lloyd as Anikin in Star Wars Episode I look like academy award winner Daniel Day Lewis. Ringer is like nails on a chalkboard for your eye balls. The movie is full of unexplainable film making techniques, such as, when cutting from one scene, he splices a random shot of a field before going to the next scene. While looking at the field (which is unrelated to the last scene) we start to hear the voice over of characters talking for the next scene. You expect to see the people in the field somewhere, but instead, we cut to a whole different location where the characters are speaking. Why did we take time out of our film to see this banal meadow that had nothing to do with the two scenes that bookend it? Such are the mysteries of Shyamalan. I watched this movie with Rifftrax (recordings made by the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 for new films that you download and play as you watch the movie), which was so funny it gave me an asthma attack. I recommend seeing this movie with Rifftrax only, the effects are good, and you will laugh at M. Night, which is always a good time. No twist ending, but a set up for a sequel that will never happen after this belly flopped to its doom.
The Happening- 4
FACE FACE FACE
This movie is more packed with Shyamalan's utter ignorance to human interaction than any of his films. Something about Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschannel just feels so manufactured. The dialogue and direction is actually so funny it's almost worth watching for that reason alone (but that's the only reason). They spend most of the film running from the wind, and no matter where they end up, everybody inexplicably understands that Wahlberg is the best candidate to be in charge, even when he's standing absolutely still in the face of the killer wind and THINKING REALLY HARD about what to do when the only action anybody takes in the entire film is people running (and dying). Other characters are only ever there as filler and nobody's motivations make any lick of sense. One character is trying to escape the deadly wind with his daughter, and instead of staying with his daughter, he decides it's best to go on to what the audience knows is a suicide mission to a town that everybody knows is already decimated, to find his wife who everybody knows is already dead. Then we're expected to give a shit when he dies. Other character-less screen fillers are young teenagers who show up as "part of the gang" with no explanation, completely unconcerned with the well being or whereabouts of their parents or family. They are instead stoked about being able to run around being tough kids... until they get shot in the face. But all that aside, it's hard to get into a movie when the plot fundamentally makes no sense.
SPOILERS AHEAD
I can buy into the storyline of plants excreting something that takes away humans sense of self-preservation. That's actually an interesting, environmentally conscious storyline. But if you ask me, the loss of your sense of self-preservation wouldn't make you stab yourself in the throat or actively leap off a building. It would have been more interesting to see people have passive suicidal tendencies instead of actively committing suicide. Personally, I was rooting for the plants. Bonus points for showing a really annoying 14 year old kid get shot in the face.
Lady in the Water- there is no rating system that can properly grade this film other than the number of pieces every copy of this film should be smashed into. Which is millions.
"Is there a messiah out here. No. Just pretentious film makers and the stench of self importance."
"Lady in the Water" is tied with "Elizabethtown" for my two all time worst movies ever made. They not only don't contribute to society as films, but actually suck intelligence out of you. This pairing with "Elizabethtown" is particularly notable because I always loathe romantic comedies, but fantasy and horror are genres I can usually enjoy on a superficial level, if not really appreciate them. But LITW offended me in ways I didn't think was possible. It is one of those pieces of art that when people tell me they like it, I have to reconsider my relationship with them.
The plot is so far beyond contrived, but I will try to surmise it. Yes this will include spoilers, no you should not care. The setting is an apartment complex, full of tenants each of whom have their own desperate quirk. The maintenance man, Paul Giamatti finds a girl (Bryce Dallas Howard.... uuuuuugh) in the pool one night. He discovers that she is a nymph, only they call it a Narf, which is the nonsensical exclamation that the mouse Pinky from the cartoon "Pinky and the Brain" used to shout like he had tourettes. This NARF named Story is lost from her homeland and a monster is after her, Giamatti has to get home to reclaim the throne, blah, blah, blah. In order to get her home some kind of complex ritual has to be performed, and all of the tenants have to play various parts in it, Symbolist, Guardian, Guild, and Healer. Of course nobody questions the validity of a NARF because none of them saw "Animaniacs". They go ahead and perform the ritual, and it doesn't work. So we get to watch them scramble around the roles they all play and suddenly people are all disbelieving "No, I CAN'T be the GUARDIAN! That's CRAZY!" Now, to me, when you spend half the movie setting random quirky characters into these random positions to do some action, then spend the other half of the movie reshuffling the same undeveloped characters into the same random positions, that only counts as HALF a plot because you're just performing the same actions twice. Anyway, they do it, she leaves, and we're all better off without Bryce Dallas Howard.
You might think that the contrived, nonsensical and unnecessarily complex plot is the worst part of the film, but far from it. This was the film that informs the audience that Shyamalan thinks we're dumb. That's right, if we listen to what the movie tells us (and anything this movie tells us once, it tells us multiple times), then we, the audience, have no experience seeing films, have no intuition of genre or plot or theme or foreshadowing. In order to keep us informed of what Shyamalan thinks is his ever so deft and intricate film making, he writes in a film critic (of the quirky variety, of course). Through this character, Shyamalan takes every opportunity to let him TELL US what he is doing as a filmmaker. This is most evident in which the character narrates his own death scene, explaining to us that this is the point in the film when the unlikeable side character is confronted by his past deeds in the form of a CGI wolf-monster. Now, if that is not evidence enough for his arrogance, just wait. Trying to liken himself to Hitchcock, Shyamalan gives himself cameos in all of his films. Usually it is in a passing scene, but in "Lady in the Water" he gives himself a larger role. Not only a larger role, but he literally writes himself in as the SAVIOR OF MANKIND. Yes, you read those capitals correctly, he make himself the messiah. Shyamalan plays a writer who is writing a piece of nonfiction which will inspire some corn-fed Midwesterner who will in turn become a great leader and usher the world into a new Camelot or something. I have never felt like a filmmaker has to obviously insulted my intelligence while holding me upside down from my ankles and shaking my money out of my pockets.
What's astounding is that this script is what made him lose his contract with Disney. They wanted him to change it, and he absolutely refused to make any modifications... which got him fired. As it should have.
In conclusion, the moral of the story is that Shyamalan thinks that he's utterly brilliant and that you're too stupid to understand his obvious references and tropes unless he writes in a character who can literally tell you what his intentions are. What he has to tell us about himself in this film is loathsome and unforgivable. This movie just had too much ego filling up the theater, maybe that's why nobody went to see it and it flopped.
The Village- 2.5 points
Why is this blind girl looking at me?
Sigourney Weaver, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, Michael Pitt, and yet, they are not able to save this movie from Bryce Dallas Howard's pathetic attempt at trying to play a blind girl. I don't know if Howard was just not told what being blind means, or if she's just that feeble minded, but this blind girl somehow knows exactly where everything was, and looks right at it. I really didn't understand that she was blind for a good part of the film because she plays it so awfully. This film planted the seeds for my seething hate of Bryce Dallas Howard that I usually save for cheese and romantic comedies. The plot is uninspiring, the monsters in it are pretty creatively designed, but the surprise ending wasn't so much a surprise as much as it was a surprise that it was supposed to be a surprise. Bonus points for only having the Shyamalan cameo shown in a reflection.
Signs- 2 points
Mel Gibson, M. Night Shyamalan, lots of people looking at things in the dark and an ending that leaves any agnostic, atheist and anybody with a basic understanding of biology or common sense- unfulfilled. That pretty much sums up this one.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The movie's about aliens and the "twist" ending is that water burns the aliens like acid (and that god exists and sends cryptic messages). Why an intelligent life form able to travel millions of light years to come to our planet wouldn't take precautions against this substance that burns the shit out of them, AND covers 70% of the planet, only Shyamalan knows... And maybe God.
Unbreakable- 8 points
Picture by Alex Ross!
This is the one film of Shyamalan's that I not only find mostly tolerable, but is actually really good. I would argue that it's one of the best superhero films ever made, a very well structured origin story. The characterization and plot is subtle, but scores ahead of the contemporary superhero flicks that are out there today. Shyamalan's usually pretentious methods of film making are utilized here in a proper way, emphasizing duality, reflections and opposites all which are important to the story itself. His camera work is also interesting to watch, full of single perspectives, it keeps the viewer both detached and engaged. Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson both excel at their larger than life roles, giving them large doses of humanity accompanied with eccentricities to give them an edge. The ending is a somewhat predictable twist, but brings the movie to a good full circle. Still, the movie still would hold up without it, which is what's important with a twist ending, it can't be the one thing that makes the movie good. And what's best is that you can tell it is made from a perspective that really loves comics.
The Sixth Sense- 6 points
Shyamalan's breakout film was actually nominated for best picture, screenplay, director, supporting actor (Osment), supporting actress (Collette) and editing. It didn't win a single one. I never got what the big deal about this movie was. Haley Joel Osment is okay, and I'm usually down for some Bruce Willis, but as a fan of horror movies, this wasn't really anything special. The twist ending is interesting if you watch it with no intuition about film at all, and if you remove the ending you just have a half assed horror movie that never really "goes there" and has a single scary scene. But bonus points for Toni Collette, Olivia Williams and 1/9th of NKOTBSB.
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