[Preface: I wasn’t going to post this, it’s been sitting in my drafts since whenever Knock At The Cabin came out, but I was harassed into posting it by @RibbonBlack so blame them for this.]
Extremely long post, hit 'read more' at your own peril. Just me rambling about my relationship to Shyamalan movies and how I got into them. Tried to keep it spoiler-free, though I made allusions to some spoiler-y stuff in The Village.
"Unfortunately, I'm going to have to shut the camera off."
I remember sitting in a theatre watching Signs back in 2002. I was about 9 years old and I hated almost the entire movie. The few spooky scenes are and were, of course, knockouts. But for the most part, I thought it was slow and dull. I rewatched it recently and while I'm much more lenient towards it, I still think it's too slow and one of Shyamalan's weaker movies, especially when it comes to the child actors' performances. Honestly folks, I just don't care for dramas about sad dads, even when they're really well made. So, nine year old me wrote off Shyamalan as a film director I had very little interest in.
A few years later, I caught the second half of The Village on TV. I watched it on a whim and it burned itself into my mind. I don't think I blinked once watching that movie, I adored it. The intensity, the sincerity, the colours! I thought to myself, "Gosh, maybe I should give Shyamalan another chance?" and then he went and made The Happening, Lady in the Water, so on, and so on, we don’t need to list the others. I didn't see them at the time but they were so thoroughly shredded by everyone that I assumed The Village was his one-hit wonder, as far as my own personal taste went anyway. In reality, most of those same people thought The Village was trash too, so why did I listen to them in the first place? Regardless, I once again wrote off Shyamalan and went on with my life.
Let's jump forward to about 2020-2021. I'm binging media as most of us were around that time, and one of those happens to be a wonderful little show called "Avatar: The Last Airbender". I'm sure you can already see where this is going. I finish the show, and happen to see the live action movie on whatever streaming service I was using at the time. I decide, against my better judgment, to watch it just out of morbid curiosity. And let me tell you, dear reader, holy fucking shit what a load of ass that movie is. I don't need to get into the details but it ranks as one of the worst movies I've ever had the misfortune of seeing. Right up there with The Clone Wars movie as a "I am worse off as a person for having seen this" type of film.
Almost immediately after I saw it, I had to know more about what the fuck Shyamalan was doing. Morbid curiosity, after all. I saw that he made one more (presumably terrible) attempted-blockbuster movie, this time with checks notes Will Smith and his son? Huh. (I haven't seen it, I won't see it, don't ask me.) But here's where it gets interesting, after he made After Earth, he decided to remortgage his house and independently fund a found footage horror comedy called The Visit.
What?
I couldn't help but be interested. Even though I had just watched one of the worst movies - if not the worst - I've ever seen in my life, I prepared to watch another.
There's a lot to be said about the kind of risk Shyamalan took doing that. Given that it had been about 12 years since Shyamalan made a universally accepted "Good Movie", it was a hell of a risk. In fact, he had burned so much good will, and money, that nobody in Hollywood wanted to buy it. But luckily, Jason Blum picked it up at the last minute and Shyamalan happened to not only make a commercially and critically successful film, he made what is probably my favourite horror movie of all time.
"Nobody gives a crap about cinematic standards."
It's hard to imagine the kind of stress Shyamalan must've been under while making this, but he manages to make it feel effortless and natural. I don't want to get too deep into the sauce about The Visit, I can leave that for another time, but it's worth noting that this is a massive turning point in his career. As of writing this, Shyamalan still finances his own films, he's still taking out loans to pay for his new films, and he's still making these weird experimental independent one-location films with very low budgets (relatively speaking). It seems like everybody has forgotten about him, or they deride him just because hey, he's Shyamalan.
I think that's really a shame because Shyamalan is on some fucking bullshit lately. Let me try to explain, hopefully without sounding too unhinged: Shyamalan's early Touchstone Era (Sixth Sense to The Village, we're ignoring his first two films) are brilliantly made films, they are also fairly safe by mainstream standards and have less of what I would call the modern Shyamalan touch. However, The Village was when Shyamalan started to gain real confidence in his own sensibilities, blending camp and kitsch until it achieves a sincerity so overbearing I don't think anyone could tolerate it. But most people just wrote it off as "People are the real monsters." No need to go off on a long tangent about it, but the movie isn't about that. Try to think about it more as a prediction of the future trad bullshit people are on these days, and a sharp observation of the lengths traumatized people will go to to find perceived peace. Or you could just say it's about rich white people being on their bullshit, that works too. I think Shyamalan was really pissed about how easily people wrote off The Village, he put a ton of effort into it, and I really do think it's his shining masterpiece. In my opinion there's a pretty direct line from the absurd sincerity in The Village to the sincere absurdity in The Visit but unfortunately this is where Shyamalan's career takes a detour.
Now we get to the Bad Era. Lady in the Water and The Happening were total flops. Though I still think they have individual elements that are great, like the wholehearted embrace of camp and sincerity, but they are fairly weak B-movies that are too inconsistent in tone to be successful. But! Shyamalan got way too much flak for being a character in Lady in the Water, he was good! And sweet! And funny! Let the man act, he's not terrible like Tarantino is, so let him do his thing. Also, I had a bit of a surreal realization while watching The Happening, people always told me it was unintentionally funny, and The Happening is a mess with inconsistent tone for sure, but it's 100% intentionally funny. Anyway, after The Happening happened he gave up making the kinds of movies he wanted to make and we got The Last Airbender and After Earth, two pathetic attempts at making a big blockbuster movie. I don't need to dig up quotes but Shyamalan has been very emphatic that these movies were big mistakes and almost ended his career.
Let's move on to the Great Era which is... Right now! From The Visit in 2015, to Knock at the Cabin in 2023 (that's now!), every single one of these movies has been near-perfect if not perfect. Okay, well, perfect for me and my sensibilities anyway. These are fucking weird movies, though. I struggle with how to capture the vibe of all these movies, this "era" he's in, but try to imagine experimental sincere camp. I don't know if that's the right thing to call it, but it's the best I've got. They are all absolutely absurd but they never, ever wink at the camera, and the movie never mocks the situation or the characters, but it also never takes itself any more seriously than it ought to. There must be a German word for the way these movies feel. His modern stuff feels like the highest quality B-movies I've ever seen, for whatever that's worth. By the way, Shyamalan knows how silly his movies are. Please don't assume that he's "taking it too seriously". He isn't. I guarantee he knows exactly how fucking stupid and silly 'the beach that makes you old' is (hell I bet he loves the memes) but he also knows how scary it is to have your body - or someone else's body, someone you love - deteriorate in front of your eyes and you can't do anything to stop it. And that's Shyamalan, baby.
"Belief in oneself is contagious."
I find it funny when I see sentiments like "kill the part of you that cringes" because I think that you have to do that to be able to watch Shyamalan films, especially these new ones. I'll be honest, I went into Knock At The Cabin with pretty low expectations for no real reason other than "He's gotta fuck up sometime right? I mean, he's Shyamalan" but I actually loved every second of it. Maybe the only movie I've seen about gay romance that didn't make me cringe! People have wrongly associated Shyamalan with "twists", but that's not fair and it's not true. If you want to know what is in every single Shyamalan movie, it's love. All of his movies are about love. Loving others, loving yourself, the power of love to transform the world around us. It's all love all the way down. There isn't a cynical bone in the man's body and I love him for it.
I'm not trying to convince anyone to watch his movies, I've just been kinda writing my thoughts out about him and turned out I had a written a whole thing. But man, if you're anything like me and you love a great B-movie, and if you're sick of remakes of remakes of reboots of adaptations of reimaginings... Check his shit out.
I really do hope at some point the public perception of him changes because I think he's done enough to be forgiven.
So, Shyamalan, how about a movie about transgender love saving the world next?
(In case you're curious, my top 3 Shyamalan movies are: The Visit, The Village, and Glass.)
