The Death Spiral Of M. Night Shyamalan’s Career

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The Death Spiral Of M. Night Shyamalan’s Career
12:23 PM By WALT HICKEY


The director M. Night Shyamalan is out on Friday with a new movie, “The Visit,” a film about two kids who have a lovely time hanging out with their grandparents.1

In classic Shyamalan fashion, the movie may provide a pretty huge shock: It’s earning a good score on Rotten Tomatoes! Not a great score, but leagues ahead of what we’d expect based on the director’s recent work. How did one of the most promising directors of the early 2000s get to the point where we’re expecting schlock?

Incorporating data from Rotten Tomatoes and OpusData, let’s review the story of how Shyamalan tanked his directorial reputation, and the small-budget horror comedy that might redeem it.



THE GOLDEN AGE OF M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN

“The Sixth Sense” is a really good movie. The film is about a troubled child learning how to cope with the help of a psychologist friend (Bruce Willis) who’s learning how to move on with his life.2 “The Sixth Sense” made an alarming amount of money — it was the second-highest grossing film of 1999 — and generally pulled the carpet out from under the feet of audiences, earning an 85 percent certified fresh Rotten Tomatoes rating from critics and an 89 percent favorable score from fans.

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THE BREAKING POINT

In 2004, “The Village” constituted a bit of a breaking point for Shyamalan. The film featured Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix and Academy-Award-winner/future-“Dragon Blade”-star Adrien Brody as people mixed up in a deranged Colonial Williamsburg situation5. Financially and critically, it was the worst of Shyamalan’s wide-release movies at the time. ..............(more)

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