The new M. Night Shyamalan movie, After Earth, is apparently quite a stinker, according to reviews. A notable feature of the film’s marketing is that the producers seem to want to downplay, or at least not highlight, the fact that Shyamalan directed it, instead focusing on the Will/Jaden Smith father/son starring duo. I don’t have much interest in seeing the movie, largely due to the absurd premise regarding evolution, but I am intrigued by how the movie’s release is sparking some retrospection about Shyamalan’s movies.

Scott Meslow at The Week had the following to say:

It’s logical — but somehow vaguely disheartening — that Shyamalan is now embarking on the career for which he was probably always more qualified: Not as a distinctive and idiosyncratic director in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock, but as a Renny Harlin or a Louis Leterrier — a director who’s just talented enough to add some verve to an otherwise undistinguished studio picture.

I don’t find it disheartening, because while I think Shyamalan’s movies (aside from The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable) have generally been sub-par, I think the primary criticism of him has missed the mark.

You knew this scene was coming, but admit it, it still scared the *&$%*!@# out of you (via kent-informationoverload.blogspot.com).

I’ll start off with something I think Shyamalan does exceedingly well, which is his direction of “jump scenes,” i.e. scenes that startle or shock you, such that you jump out of your seat. Shyamalan can broadcast, sometimes for minutes in advance, that a jump scene is coming, and the audience still jumps (or is at least meaningfully startled.) The scene with the kid and a barfing ghost (played by a young Mischa Barton) in The Sixth Sense comes to mind, although the best example is probably the “alien in the pantry” scene in Signs. He may be best suited as a director of action or suspense films written by others, as opposed to an auteur from whom everyone expects certain signatures.

Here’s where I think the criticism of Shyamalan’s movies is off-base: Meslow remarks on “Shyamalan’s over-reliance on twists,” but I don’t think he relies on twists at all. I think people came to expect twists from him after The Sixth Sense and, to a lesser extent, Unbreakable, and when no “twists” presented themselves, people assumed he just did a bad job at presenting the twist. The effort to force Shyamalan’s films into a “plot twist” model turned people against him, through no particular fault of his own. This is unfortunate, because most of his movies (at least the ones I have seen) stink for reasons unrelated to the question of plot twists. Spoiler alerts from here on out. Continue reading →