The M. Night Shyamalan Defense — come at me, bro!

M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN – PHOTO BY JASON LAVERIS/FILMMAGIC

With the trailer for “Glass” dropping at SDCC, I come to the defense about the previous M. Night Shyamalan movies and try to prove why they are great.

One of the hottest things to come out of SDCC 2018 was the big trailer for the upcoming M. Night Shyamalan movie, Glass. Glass is the continuing story of Unbreakable in the same universe as Split. People are very excited about this one.

But that hasn’t always been the case with Shyamalan movies. If you were to ask someone the last good Shyamalan movie, they would pick The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable or maybe even Split, but they hated everything in the middle. They like to argue that he’s a one trick pony and that his movies are boring and/or uninteresting. I’m here to tell you you’re entitled to your opinion. You’re wrong, but you’re entitled. I come on behalf of the Shyamalan Defense.

That’s right, I’m on the side of M. Night Shyamalan as a great director with a slew of intriguing and intelligent movies. “What about The Last Airbender?” you might respond and to that I say…we’re just pretending that one doesn’t exist. Everybody has an off day or an off movie in this case.

So, after granting a single pass for that disaster of the eyes, let’s look over his past films that led up to Glass and try to prove why he is worth more praise than he receives. We will be bypassing The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Split because those are widely agreed to be wonderful and his best. I’m wanting to scrape the so-called bottom of the barrel.

Image courtesy of Touchstone Home Entertainment

Signs

Arguably my favorite M. Night Shyamalan film. Aliens are the best and this movie showcased the invasion brilliantly. It was a slow burn to a puzzle you couldn’t see until the very end. Mel Gibson is a creep but it doesn’t affect the movie’s quality in the least. Joaquin Phoenix is outstanding, Abigail Breslin and the tiniest Culkin, Rory, were so sweet they made your teeth hurt. Pop on your foil hats cause we’re moving on. Nothing more to see here.

Image courtesy of Touchstone Pictures

The Village

I’ll say it, I really liked this one. I didn’t see the Shyamalan Twist coming, I thought the building of the tension was effective, the characters were deep and the story was overwhelmingly sad but relatable. The Village was well shot, the use of color was important and well done and this movie is overall very well made. Haters gonna hate.