Mediocrity at the Movies
In 1999, M. Night Shyamalan, better known simply as Night, wrote and directed The Sixth Sense. Just a year later, he put out Unbreakable. Together, these two films brought in over $900 million at the box office. Many in Hollywood had dubbed this up-and-coming star as “the next Steven Spielberg.” (Consequently, Night created The Sixth Sense when he was just 29 years old, the same age as Spielberg when he directed Jaws.)
Then in 2002, Night wrote and directed Signs. It wasn’t a perfect gem, but it was outstanding in its own way. Surely whatever he touched would turn to gold. Two years later, The Village (2004) became his first film met with heavy criticism. It lacked depth and complexity, and some found it altogether boring. Still, an artist’s trajectory is never linear, and like many people at the time, I was hopeful it was only a blip in his otherwise successful career.
But then came The Lady in the Water (2006), The Happening (2008) and After Earth (2013). All three of them flopped. And that isn’t just my opinion. If all three of these films had their scores on Rotten Tomatoes added together, it would still be a meager 55%.
Split (2016) was a modest improvement, but that was only because James McAvoy’s stellar performance carried the production. But even McAvoy was outdone by the post-credit scene featuring Bruce Willis, which linked Split back to the storyline of Unbreakable.
Split’s successor, Glass (2019), was reprehensible and a rehash of characters that should have been sent out to pasture long ago. Old (2021) and Knock at the Cabin (2023) had their moments of originality, sure, but their creativity was sluggish for someone so familiar with the medium.
For the last twenty years, I have wanted Night to be a filmmaker who reinvented cinema, a director who surprises the audience with plot twists, jump scares, and slow buildups that explode into a shockwave of catharsis. But after two decades of disappointment and mediocrity, it seems more and more like Night doesn’t know when to hang up his hat.
Perhaps M. Night Shyamalan is not the next Steven Spielberg like we all thought, but the next Orson Wells, who, for forty years, chased his success of Citizen Kane (1941) yet always came up short. Wells would direct 23 feature films in his career, but none ever matched his first big hit. He, like Night, lost the negotiating power he once wielded and struggled to schmooze the Hollywood financiers. Wells’s later projects would be self-funded or crowd sourced, similar to how Night has financed his last few films.
So, will Trap be M. Night Shyamalan’s redemption? In a word, no.
Trap, released earlier this month, is performing on par with the director’s latest trend. There are, however, whispers of his definitive style: a reflection in a tea kettle — reminiscent of the doorknob shot from The Sixth Sense, long cuts that build up to a big reveal — a la Unbreakable, and so on. But these feel like predictable tricks of smoke and mirrors, which hardly compensate for the dialogue that falls flat (like it did in The Happening) or the mile-wide plot holes (like in The Village).
When the final twist comes, if one can call it that, it’s a moot point, and serves no function to thicken the plot or advance the character’s development. Even the post-credit scene is glib at best; it’s an unnecessary gag that doesn’t relieve tension or establish the grounds for a sequel. In the end, Trap is all form and no substance.
I left the theater truly scratching my head, asking myself, among other things: has M. Night Shyamalan never been to a concert?
I so badly want Night to make another film on par with his earlier works. But none from the last twenty years, including Trap, have measured up. Still, I can’t help but feel nostalgic every time he releases a new movie, and I will undoubtedly keep rooting for him in the future.
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