Night calls

I’m in the minority, but I feel sorry for M. Night Shyamalan. I know, it’s hard to feel sorry for a Hollywood wunderkind who showed the kind of promise, made the kind of money and then crashed and burned the way he did. But I do.

I thoroughly enjoyed three of the ten films that Night’s directed. That’s at least one more than most people.

Like almost everyone, I loved The Sixth Sense. Even though I knew the secret from the very first time I saw the trailer (Haley Joel Osment looks at Bruce Willis and says, “I see dead people.” Hello? What do you need, a roadmap?), the mood, writing, look and secrets in the film were spellbinding.

His next, Unbreakable, was also a keeper. For any comic book or superhero fan such as myself (Comic Con again this year?! Why yes), the ending and reveal of who Samuel L. Jackson really was didn’t exactly come as a surprise. But it was still thrilling, as is the idea of the long-talked about sequel.

This third film is where I part ways with almost everyone I know. Signs. I liked this story of a man, Mel Gibson, who once was a man of the cloth but now finds himself questioning his faith. That’s what the movie was about, despite the fact it was sold as an alien invasion, sci-fi film. There is nuance, genuine heartbreak (SPOILER ALERT: I dare you to keep a dry eye as Gibson is talking to his wife before she dies) and redemption.

With these first three successes (yes, Signs made money), Night was allowed to write, produce, direct and often give himself larger acting roles in his films than he should have, seemingly without any supervision from the studio. From The Village (a rip-off of this Twilight Zone episode), to The Happening (which wasn’t), to The Lady In The Water, to The Last Airbender, each film stunk up the place more than the next.

Part of the problem was Night tried to duplicate the big twist/reveal ending of Sixth Sense in each of the subsequent films. He couldn’t.

He fancied himself a Spielberg. He wasn’t.

The studios thought they’d make buckets of money using his name as a brand. They didn’t.

What I don't understand is the extreme hate. When his name comes up on a film, people boo. Or laugh. Or groan. Why is he box office poison any more than Kate Hudson or Jennifer Aniston or Kathryn Heigl, all of whom seem to keep finding work. I think every Adam Sandler film deserves the same reaction (except for the laughing part). Maybe that's the reason the only place Night's name shows up for his latest film, After Earth starring Will Smith and his son, is on the poster. (By the way, it's been getting eviscerated in the reviews, and has a bottom-dwelling 13% on Rotten Tomatoes).

At least he's consistent.

Not that he asked me, but if I were him I'd walk away from the genre for a while. I'd direct something totally out of character and unexpected. Perhaps a comedy, which he's shown some real flair for in portions of some of his films. And I'd give myself a cameo, because as director it's fun to do that. But I'd make it a real cameo - the kind Hitchcock gave himself, usually about two seconds of screen time.

There are already a million Sixth Sense jokes, and even a YouTube video, about the secret of Night's career being that it was already dead. There's also a book about how he crashed and burned.

I can't say I've enjoyed a film of his in a long time.

But I'm still hoping the story of his career has a surprise ending.