Who were the defining American auteurs of the 2000s? Not Tarantino, nor the Andersons Wes and Paul Thomas, nor Robert Rodriguez or Richard Linklater, who all emerged in the 1990s. To varying degrees, they’re all still associated with the 1990s (Wes Anderson the least so, even if he made two features in the 1990s). But still, none of them. The preeminent director of the 2000s was M. Night Shyamalan.
Who also made two feature films in the 1990s—before his breakthrough hit The Sixth Sense in 1999. It’s still his most famous film. But is Shyamalan a 1990s director? Of course not. His imperial phase spanned the first decade of the 20th century before he was cut down in 2010 by an industry that hated his “cockiness” for years. Avatar: The Last Airbender made money, and 2013’s After Earth merely matched its budget of $98 million, give or take a few million. Cutthroat Island it was not. He was back with the low-budget The Visit in 2015, then the surprise success of Split the next year, and ever since Shyamalan has rebuilt his career by making “smaller, tighter films” where has more control. In 2024, he’s still one of America’s leading auteurs, and one of only a handful of directors who can draw an audience on their name, not the star or the subject.
I went to a revival of Brian De Palma’s Carrie the other day at the Senator Theatre in Baltimore. A trailer for Trap, Shyamalan’s latest, played beforehand. I saw kids in front nod their heads in recognition and start to pay attention. The group behind me was just as rapt, and they hadn’t even been born when Shyamalan started to tumble. None of these kids marveling at how they got into an R-rated movie without being carded were there when I saw The Village in the same theater 20 years ago. My mom, my brother and I went, and it was, in one of the best years in film history, a huge disappointment. Shyamalan hadn’t shown his hand before this—The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs were airtight and scary, serious horror movies that took place in the real world. The ending of The Village was just one of those moviegoing moments everyone has experienced: “Oh, come on…”
I didn’t see 2006’s Lady in the Water at the time, but watched it last year. It was much worse than I was led to believe, a bitter fantasy mixing children’s stories with film critic murder; as an artistic response to widespread criticism, Intolerance it’s not. He ended his four-film relationship with Disney over their lack of enthusiasm over that script, so he skipped around studios for the rest of the decade. The Happening I did see, also with my mom and brother, and we laughed just about all the way through. He had truly lost it. This was the most laughable apocalyptic scenario treated with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, brutal in every way, from its graphic suicides to its bizarre line readings (“Don’t take my daughter’s hand unless you mean it”).
Shyamalan apparently told the cast and crew of The Happening that, “We are making a B-movie here,” no illusions. His critical reevaluation, along with new generations of fans, have clarified his cinema. Spirituality is at the center of his work, and it’s the twists and genres that got in the way when he was striding the earth. In the New Atheist era of the 2000s, Shyamalan’s earnest characters looking upward for guidance and salvation just seemed silly, if not stupid. But these are the exact qualities that defined 2023’s Knock at the Cabin, and to a lesser extent Old; looking back at his imperial phase now, it’s clear he had much more going on than clever twists that eventually got old.
The Happening, for instance, is one of the only good September 11 movies. If my family and I didn’t want to recognize it as such at the time, it was only because it was so jarring: much more horrific and bleak than usual, yet full of comedy or attempts at comedy that leave you genuinely unbalanced. Do the shots of trees blowing in the wind look menacing now, or are they still ridiculous? Well, if Shyamalan had submitted this as his entry to some kind of Grindhouse double feature, it surely would’ve been accepted, but this was too much. Nature taking revenge on mankind is a fine idea for a movie, and perfectly cinematic. Trees, bushes. He didn’t even have to do anything that he didn’t already do in The Happening—just get rid of the trees blowing in the wind. We know they’re killing everyone. They still aren’t scary. They’re trees.
But everyone’s reaction to the situation is as bracing as Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds or the opening of Children of Men—if we laughed, it’s because we already knew the drill, and wouldn’t it be funny if trees had attacked us on September 11; The Village, on the other hand, holds up much better now without the highest expectations of Shyamalan’s career riding on it. The cast is nuts: Joaquin Phoenix, Bryce Dallas Howard, William Hurt, Adrien Brody, Brendan Gleeson, Judy Greer, Cherry Jones, Sigourney Weaver, Michael Pitt, Jesse Eisenberg, Celia Weston.
The Village isn’t about the luddite twist, or the red-cloaked creatures terrorizing the villagers. It’s about William Hurt. Any fair compilation of his greatest screen moments would include him telling Joaquin Phoenix, “You are fearless in a way that I shall never know” in magnificent close-up. It’s one of the greatest shots of his career, and Shyamalan’s. But it’s not Broadcast News. It’s not The Accidental Tourist. It’s not even Body Heat! If Shyamalan takes himself and his work seriously, it’s no more than peer Tarantino, and he’s certainly no more cocky! But beyond Hollywood and the entertainment press rearing for a backlash, it was the audience that felt betrayed, and in the late-2000s they abandoned an artist they never understood in the first place. But, of course, they came back—and he’s still here.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter and Instagram: @nickyotissmith