Throughout his career, M. Night Shyamalan has managed to carve out a distinct filmography
filled with stylized genre efforts - featuring compelling characters, extraordinary mysteries,
and some of the greatest twists in the history of cinema.
Here are all of M. Night Shyamalan's movies, ranked from worst to best.
M. Night Shyamalan built his reputation on crafting thoughtful blockbuster films with
non-blockbuster budgets.
Of his first seven films, none cost more than $75 million to make.
So it was a little surprising that on the heels of two major flops, Shyamalan managed
to procure a whopping $150 million for his adaptation of the fantastical adventure The
Last Airbender.
Maybe he just couldn't the resist the temptation to go bigger than he'd ever gone before, but
those who bought a ticket to see The Last Airbender were left wondering exactly where
that money went.
A wave of abysmal reviews greeted the movie’s release.
Considering that Airbender is based on a wildly inventive Nickelodeon series, you’ve got
to marvel at the sheer dullness of this adaptation, which is driven by soulless performances,
stale visuals, uninspired set pieces, and unbelievably bad special effects.
Needless to say, initial plans for a Shyamalan-directed Airbender trilogy were promptly halted, though
the film still fared reasonably well at the box office: in fact, it managed to rake in
north of $300 million worldwide, which may be the biggest twist Shyamalan has ever pulled.
Prior to beginning production on his 2006 fairytale Lady In The Water, Shyamalan was
on one hell of a winning streak, with two instant classics to his credit and a couple
of solid box office hits to boot.
So Lady In The Water, which boasted a cast fronted by Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard
and Jeffrey Wright, made its premiere aiming for a higher bar than even Shyamalan might've
understood.
Needless to say, critics were less than kind to Shyamalan's bonkers yarn about a blue-collar
guy trying to help a stranded water faerie return to her homeworld.
Sadly, it’s hard to disagree with those reviews.
Though Lady In The Water features stunning visual elements, the story is a wildly unfocused
confection of kooky characters, half-baked fantasy elements, and contrived plot twists.
Lady In The Water sunk with audiences too, becoming Shyamalan's first legit box office
bomb - and one of his most disappointing efforts to date.
Shyamalan began work on his debut film Praying With Anger while still a student at NYU.
He wrote, produced, funded, directed, and starred in the project himself.
It revolves around an Americanized young man of East Indian descent returning home to rediscover
his roots - and Shyamalan, who was born in India and raised in an affluent suburb of
Philadelphia, based Praying With Anger on his own return trip to India in his teens.
Needless to say, it was an intensely personal story.
Praying With Anger has a warmth and sense of humor all but absent from much of his later
work.
As with most debuts, however, it isn't without its problems.
The movie suffers from tone and pacing issues, and Shyamalan - never a particularly strong
performer - proves he likely took on one job too many by casting himself in the lead.
Whether he made that decision based on necessity or on hubris, Shyamalan's flat, detached performance
is often painful to watch.
“I just decided I wanted to see as much of India as I can.
There are a lot of beautiful things in this culture.
Really beautiful.”
Luckily, there's enough going on beneath the surface of Praying With Anger to keep it engaging.
At the very least, it's a compelling look at a first-time director figuring out just
how movies work.
Even after the costly debacle that was 2010's The Last Airbender, Shyamalan wasn't quite
done swinging for the big-budget fences - and Hollywood studios weren't quite done betting
big on the director, either.
Columbia Pictures ponied up $130 million for Shyamalan's sci-fi adventure After Earth,
and although the reviews weren't quite as abysmal as they had been for his most recent
efforts, they weren't exactly good.
That's not totally surprising.
After Earth was originally pitched to Shyamalan by Will Smith as a star vehicle for himself
and his son Jaden, and follows the pair as they struggle for survival after being shipwrecked
on an alien planet.
It's a promising setup for the Shyamalan treatment, but the surprising lack of chemistry between
the real-life father and son leaves an emotional void in that the movie struggles to overcome.
For his part, Shyamalan once again drops the ball when it comes to the film's staging and
visual elements, wasting the talents of brilliant cinematographer Peter Suschitzky along the
way.
Though After Earth bombed hard stateside, it did well enough overseas to turn a modest
profit.
Still, given his track record with tentpole fare, we're betting it'll be awhile before
Shyamalan goes this big again.
After giving his fanbase cause for concern with Lady In The Water, Shyamalan continued
his stumble with The Happening, a sci-fi thriller that follows a teacher, his wife, and their
friends as they try to outrun a mysterious plague.
On paper, the concept has the makings of another intriguing Twilight Zone-ish tale for Shyamalan.
But the film features career-worst performances from Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, a
third act that can only be described as mind-bogglingly stupid, and the sort of hackneyed, tin-eared
writing that leaves one wondering how The Happening got off the ground at all.
“My name is Elliot Moore.
I’m just going to talk in a very positive manner, giving off good vibes.”
And there's a reason why this movie feels unpolished: Shyamalan was working on the script
while the 2007 writers’ strike loomed over Hollywood.
Fearing a lengthy content drought, studios began fast-tracking productions to fill a
potential void - and The Happening was one of them.
It was released to some of the worst reviews of Shyamalan's career, but the one thing it
has got going for it is a campy, irreverent, B-movie charm that never quite lets you take
the onscreen absurdity too seriously.
That B-movie feel may not be intentional, but it's the only reason The Happening is
at all watchable, and ultimately keeps it from claiming the title of "Worst Shyamalan
Movie."
"Why ya eyein’ my lemon drink?"
In 1998, Shyamalan returned to the director's chair for his family-friendly dramedy Wide
Awake.
The plot follows a fifth grader who sets out on a search for God after the death of his
grandfather.
Though Wide Awake never quite hits home, straying too often into the realms of shameless schmaltz,
it more than proved the director's skill at tackling complex dramatic content in a clever
and insightful way - as well as his ability to coax convincing performances from his cast.
Shyamalan's ability to work with younger actors in particular would prove important for his
next movie.
It's hard to believe how many years have passed since Shyamalan turned the superhero genre
on its head with his gloriously grounded origin story Unbreakable - and it's still surprising
how sneakily Night shocked the world by connecting his unhinged thriller Split to the same cinematic
universe.
Yet here we are, bearing witness to the rarest of big-screen events - a comic book-centric
crossover based on wholly original heroes and villains.
Folks going into Glass expecting a heroes versus villains throwdown on the level of
the latest Marvel confection will be seriously underwhelmed by the meticulously paced action
unfolding before them.
But those expecting a superpowered psychological thriller akin to Unbreakable and Split will
find themselves right at home amongst Glass' morally twisted tale of good and evil.
The movie’s ambition ultimately trumps its quality, mostly thanks to some spotty writing
by Shyamalan himself, but it also takes more risks, has more fun, and features higher stakes
than any film spawned by the MCU.
Signs might be overly-long, but it's as close to a sci-fi masterpiece as anything Shyamalan
has ever delivered.
It also finds the director skillfully blending his penchant for spellbinding mysteries and
paranoia-drenched narratives with his go-to themes of families in strife and crises of
faith - all to tell an alien invasion story with multiple twists.
This tale of a fallen preacher struggling with his faith as a largely unseen alien menace
threatens to rip his family apart is taut, tense, heartfelt, and harrowing.
It's also bolstered by one of Mel Gibson's finest performances, not to mention a scene-stealing
turn from Joaquin Phoenix.
For much of its runtime, Signs is a near flawless blend of horror-tinged atmospherics, classic
alien invasion tropes, and tragic religious parable that's unafraid to wear its heart
or its influences on its sleeve.
If only the final 10 minutes of the movie didn't exist, it might have had a legit claim
to the top spot on this list.
Sadly, that ending does exist, and if you've seen it you probably know why Signs doesn't
even earn a place in the top five.
The Village might be the most underrated film in Shyamalan's big bag of movies.
Yes, its central conceit is shamelessly manipulative.
Yes, the film's big twists are underwhelming and obvious.
But while those issues are impossible to ignore, they're not really the point.
They exist more as fan-serviced genre fodder and structural plot devices than focal points
of the actual story.
That story happens to be one of Shyamalan’s best.
It’s a mournful and gothic chamber piece bent on exploring the weighty correlation
between grief and fear, presented in the guise of a straight-up horror tale.
The plot finds an isolated village on edge when the mystical creatures who dwell in the
surrounding woods appear to break the terms of a long-standing treaty.
Shyamalan wisely focuses on interpersonal drama, allowing Roger Deakins' stark, expressive
photography and James Newton Howard's dolefully romantic score to bestow The Village with
an emotive yet disquieting unease.
In the process, he tells one of his most patently human stories - one that's well worth revisiting.
After reeling off his fourth straight big-budget misfire in After Earth, even Shyamalan seemed
to think a break was in order.
Fortunately for film lovers everywhere, he used his brief downtime to recharge his imagination
and refine his cinematic approach.
When he returned with 2015's pseudo found-footage thriller The Visit, he proved he was ready
to reclaim the title of genre maestro.
The Visit is every bit the lean, focused, genre-jumping mood-fest we'd come to expect
from Shyamalan's early work.
Only this story, which is centered on teenage siblings visiting their grandparents and finding
them entrenched in some seriously strange behavior, feels a little different.
It's dangerous and even a little depraved in ways we hadn't really seen from Shyamalan
before.
The Visit feels like Shyamalan finally giving over to the paranoid, claustrophobic menace
he'd only touched upon in his prior films, while the movie’s handheld vantage points
only heightened the broiling anxiety underneath.
That unexpected mix of anxiousness and dark danger heralded the second coming of a filmmaker
who'd found a way to tweak his signature style to feel as energetic and exhilarating as it
did in the beginning.
The Visit didn't quite put Shyamalan back on top, but it proved he was finally back
in the game.
Armed with an edgy new approach and backing from a risk-taking studio in Blumhouse, Shyamalan
was about to get down and dirty with a new genre medley.
It would turn out to be one of the wildest, creepiest rides of his career.
“The impure are the untouched, the unburned, the unslain!”
Packed with more twists than any previous Shyamalan film and anchored by an eerily transfixing
performance from James McAvoy, Split follows the nightmarish tale of a man with multiple
personality disorder.
As he struggles to find balance in his fractured mind, a dangerous new personality threatens
to take control and force him to do unspeakable things.
It's a brilliant blend of psychological thriller and straight up horror, and it earned Shyamalan
earned of the best reviews and box office returns of his career - all while unexpectedly
leading into a belated sequel of one of his most widely acclaimed films.
Unbreakable arrived in theaters in the fall of 2000 behind a cryptic trailer and under
a thick shroud of secrecy.
Over the years, it has proceeded to blow the minds of pretty much everyone who's ever seen
it.
There's really not much to say about Unbreakable that hasn't already been said, except that
it's one of those rare films that remains consistently re-watchable even after you've
uncovered all of its secrets.
That the film contains what may well stand as career-best work from Bruce Willis and
Samuel L. Jackson is a big reason for the film's success, but Unbreakable's stylishly
muted, hyper-realistic approach to the superhero origin story is a larger part of why it remains
one of the brighter highlights in Shyamalan's filmography.
Not exactly a twist ending to this list, but what else could land the top spot?
No matter how many superb movies Shyamalan might make, it will always comes back to his
breakout supernatural hit: The Sixth Sense.
Twist ending aside, perhaps the most surprising thing about The Sixth Sense is that it was
released only about a year after his so-so family dramedy Wide Awake.
It seems that all Shyamalan needed to find his groove was a couple of ghosts and one
terrified 10-year-old.
The Sixth Sense's tale of a kind-hearted boy who sees dead people found the director working
with a new level of confidence.
It also found him coaxing a career re-defining performance out of Bruce Willis and one of
the greatest child performances in history from a young Haley Joel Osment.
Yes, that twist is the stuff of legend, but the story still works even when you already
know what's coming.
Perhaps what sets Shyamalan's supernatural puzzle box apart from the pack is that, no
matter how many times you watch it, The Sixth Sense always seems to offer something new
to discover.
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