Ranking The Films of M. Night Shyamalan

With After Earth slated to be released nationwide this Friday, we here at Movie Mezzanine thought it would be worthwhile to dive into the occasionally brilliant, often times frustrating, and always fascinating filmography of M. Night Shyamalan.

Perhaps more so than any other director in recent memory, Shymalan’s films have grown progressively painful as time goes by. One could argue he hasn’t made a quality movie since Signs, which was released over a decade ago. All great auteurs have the occasional cinematic hiccup, but an 11 year cold streak is almost unheard of.

As for the films themselves, 10 writers at Movie Mezzanine contributed to the rankings below. Not a single one of them (including myself) had seen Shymalan’s first two films Praying With Anger and Wide Awake, so we’ll simply omit them from this list. Who knows where After Earth will fit into Shymalan’s eclectic oeuvre (we’ll have a review of his 10th film tomorrow morning). Alas, we hope you enjoy.

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7.) The Last Airbender 

I could find a way to forgive bad dialogue, lousy characters, underwhelming effects, terrible 3D, and racial whitewashing of characters. I can’t, however, forgive a film for being boring. The Last Airbender is apparently an adaptation of a critically-acclaimed popular animated TV series. I say apparently, because nothing about this film seems to justify critical acclaim or popularity. In fact, it successfully makes me want to avoid the original property, solely to avoid the cinematic acid flashbacks that it may inspire. I’ve defended plenty of Shyamalan’s works in the past. There is nothing to defend here. – Russell Hainline

6.) Lady in the Water

Shyamalan adapted one of his own bedtime stories for “Lady in the Water” in which a sea nymph (Bryce Dallas Howard) turns up in the swimming pool of an apartment complex and is taken in by the superintendent (Paul Giamatti) who protects her from rubbery CGI creatures while finding a way to send her home. Dingily shot, clunkily plotted and insultingly sanctimonious, Shyamalan’s fairy tale is stubbornly devoid of magic. It’s a film in which actors repeat words like “Narf” and “Scrunt” with a straight face, a child reads a prophecy hidden on a series of cereal boxes, and Shyamalan casts himself as a writer whose words will make him a martyr. It’s astoundingly nonsensical even before Bob Balaban’s character (a film critic, by the way) delivers an insane meta-monologue that’s punctuated by his horrible demise. It’s a story informed by Shyamalan’s inner five-year-old, with all the ineptitude and none of the imagination. – Jesse Knight

5.) The Happening 

I remember being strangely excited about The Happening leading up to its release. After the gigantic dud that was Lady in the Water (his worst movie) and the braindead twist of The Village, an R-rated disaster movie sounded like the jump-start Shyamalan needed. But upon finally seeing the film with an audience that uncontrollably laughed at just about every scene, it was clearer than ever at that moment that Shyamalan’s Sixth Sense days truly were over. That being said, however, I loved the experience of watching this film. Unintentionally humorous throughout and filled with absolutely ludicrous death sequences as well as an endearingly silly eco-sci-fi concept (evil plant farts!), it may not be high-art but it’s a fun, schlocky ride that lacks the dour pretentiousness that made both ‘Lady in the Water’ and ‘The Village’ so insufferable. I’d watch it over any of Shyamalan’s post-Signs work any day. – Chris Runyon

4.) The Village

The Village is always unfairly compared to M. Night’s previous three films, especially in terms of the twist. Granted, it probably wasn’t the best idea to use the same structure for four films, but his adherence to a similar structure is a shorthand that allows him to explore a place, an ideal and a time. I’ve always found the film a fascinating examination of society and human nature and how both fear and love can either save us or lead us astray. The film also touts wonderful performances by Bryce Dallas Howard and Joaquin Phoenix as well as a wonderful score by James Newton Howard with a majestic violin performance by Hilary Hahn.  The Village was the first film I ever declared my favorite film (I was 15 at the time). It’s no longer my favorite, but it still remains my favorite of M. Night’s films. – James Blake Ewing

3.) Signs

Thanks to a collective knee-jerk impulse to make trivializing jokes about aliens, doorknobs and water, Signs remains Shyamalan’s most unfairly maligned films. The most poignant of the director’s small-scale riffing on high-concept genres, Signs is also Shyamalan’s most effective marriage of narrative gimmickery with intimate drama. For all its effective alien invasion suspense, perfect balance of charming whimsy and melancholy (read: Spielberg-ian), and refreshing mix of both questioning and dogmatic reinforcing religious ideals, the film resonates most deeply as a story about grief. The imminent destruction of the world is leveraged to exorcise the grief of a family whose personal world has already been destroyed.  Signs then – and its twist – is less about surviving an alien apocalypse as it is about the signs the grief-stricken need to find meaning in death and ways to move on. – Alexander Huls

2.) The Sixth Sense

Although technically his third, The Sixth Sense was the first of Shyamalan’s films to receive any real attention from either audiences or critics, ultimately landing six Academy Award nominations and making nearly $700 million worldwide. These days it’s best remembered for its now iconic twist ending, a technique that has itself because synonymous with its directors name. Unlike the films that would follow, however, The Sixth Sense holds up regardless of such narrative tricks. With a chilly colour palette and unassuming camerawork, Shyamalan achieves a perfect atmosphere, simultaneously melancholy and unsettling. Bruce Willis, meanwhile, gives one of the best and most nuanced performances of his career, his relationship with his young co-star Haley Joel Osmond as a boy plagued by visions of ghosts providing the story with an emotional resonance that both informs and transcends its famous finale. – Tom Clift

1.) Unbreakable

As superhero movies become increasingly homogenized into reduced-risk tentpole extravaganzas, it is easy to forget this intimate turn-of-the-millennium foray into the genre. Based not on any existing property but an idealistic view of comics themselves, Unbreakable takes place mostly in the dark but struggles ever for the light. Bruce Willis, well set on his path to inert calcification, yet again parlays his gruff remove into something magical and mournful for Shyamalan, a man of supernatural potential whose greatest enemy, regardless of the twist ending, is his own self-doubt. But that ending is one of the director’s best, a split-second reconfiguration that does not merely surprise but clarify that no superhero can be such without a villain. It’s a point most comics spend years agonizingly underscoring; Shyamalan sells it in less than a minute. – Jake Cole

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We’ve discussed and ranked the films of M. Night Shyamalan. Now it’s your turn. What are your thoughts on the infamous filmmaker?