Whether You Know Its Twist Ending Or Not, The Sixth Sense Is Top-Caliber Shyamalan Filmmaking

When I wrote up on Beetlejuice earlier this year, I noted what an experience it must have been for audiences encountering that feature in its initial theatrical release to discover the extremely idiosyncratic tendencies of Mr. Tim Burton. I'd imagine there was a similar revelatory feelings for moviegoers who saw The Sixth Sense in August 1999. Though M. Night Shyamalan apparently did two movies before this one, neither of which I'd ever heard of before penning this review (the poster for 1998 Rosie O'Donnell movie Wide Awake looks so much like the quintessential 90's family movie poster, it hurts), The Sixth Sense is very much the kind of movie Shyamalan would be associated with for his entire career, a creepy thriller heavily reliant on grounded human relationships and a big twist that knocks audiences off their feet.

Unbreakable Review (Classic Write-Up)

Break Away

When I saw Unfriended this past weekend, I was shocked to see a trailer I (GASP) hadn't seen seen on the internet beforehand. The trailer was for The Visit, a found-footage(?) horror film from M. Night Shaymalan that was chock full of stupidity and terrible dialogue (the best bad line is easily "Would get into the oven to clean it?", which is delivered in a way that briefly makes it seem like the sentence will conclude with the word over) and reminded me of how far M. Night Shyamalan had fallen in recent years.