“Bro let’s go to the beach that makes you old bro oh no bro now that guys old bro I’m so scared” lmao wtf was that movie? You can’t make a movie that fucking dumb, it’s illegal. Stop M night, you’re killing me.
Dude literally sat down and was like “Oh man, you know what would be scary? What if when you got pruning from swimming at the beach it was actually the beach making you OLD! Oh fuck that’s what I’m going to call it! I’m so smart.”
Please let this man make all the movies ever.
I’d love to hear some rationale for this, it’s quite a take, or is it a bit?
No and in fact I find the mainstream reception to his later works somewhat puzzling. All of the films I’ve seen of his* (Which is all but 4 now) I’ve found deftly constructed and profoundly emotionally resonant. Each of his films have moved me in ways 99% of other Hollywood productions have failed to. Plus I think he’s one of the greatest image makers of modern cinema, each film is gorgeously shot with heaps of incredibly evocative compositions. I think his detractors seem to focus on his perceived weakness as a screenwriter, and I can see how his dialogue might not be for everyone, but it clicks for me. Maybe it’s because I’m not neurotypical enough but I don’t find myself concerned with how conversations are “supposed to sound”.
This take rocks, comrade.
Lady In The Water is what did it for me- it’s an undeniably flawed movie but the critical response was so reductive & thoughtless especially considering what the literal Story ™ was about
unironic auteur cinema
I agree that he’s a skilled filmmaker and don’t get the common and unreasonable hatred for him either, but I don’t know if I would go that far to praise him. I haven’t watched his latest several movies, but I have a theory about why many people feel that his films went downhill - how much someone enjoys his movies depends almost entirely on the order that they watch them in. That’s because his movies have common elements in them that eventually feel repetitive and somewhat predictable. It’s a big mystery, suspense, and then always a big twist reveal at the end. At least that was the pattern with his first several. I think that this repetitiveness/predictability also speaks to his weakness as a screenwriter like you mentioned, more so than his dialogue does.
To illustrate this, most people think his first hit film, The Sixth Sense, is his best. That’s because most people watched that first and then watched the later movies in order. Just look at this IMDB score progression (screenshot of list of Shyamalan’s films from The Sixth Sense [1999] to The Happening [2008] in reverse chronological order with the score for each, which shows that the scores get progressively worse with each subsequent movie in that period):
On the other hand, I know someone who watched The Village as their first Shyamalan film before watching several of his others from that same period and that’s their favorite out of the bunch. To me, this indicates that if people watched his films in isolation, never having watched any of his others, their scores would be much more even and/or random and not be exactly progressively worse.
TL;DR: My theory is that the first Shyamalan film someone watches is usually their favorite and then their impressions go downhill with each subsequent one they watch because of some repetitive elements, particularly the big twist at the end. This seems to apply to at least his first 6 popular films.
not OP but M Night is also an entirely independent filmmaker who self-funds his movies through his own production company. his movies are ass but they are entirely his own un-meddled vision, which is rare these days and i do admire
Just him and Tyler Perry out there holding the line against studio slop
All the others are secretly zombies or Canadian, like Tom Green.