Once anointed both the next Spielberg and a modern-day Hitchcock, M. Night Shyamalan has experienced a fair share of highs and lows in his 30-plus years in the movie business.
The filmmaker, who broke into the Hollywood mainstream with his 1999 smash horror hit The Sixth Sense, made a name for himself as the reigning king of the twist, shocking viewers with late-movie reveals that flipped his thrillers' plots on their heads. But a few years later, when audiences began turning on that gimmick -- and the quality of the twists became less consistent -- things quickly went downhill. What followed was a string of critical flops and big-budget blunders that sent Shyamalan's career into what has been referred to as a "death spiral."
However, over the course of the past decade, there's been a "Shyamalanaissance" of sorts. His 2015 micro-budget horror The Visit -- which Shyamalan funded by taking out $5 million against his own estate -- was seen as a return to form for the writer-director, helping to revitalize his reputation and set him down a new path. While he's yet to regain the creative heights of his earliest successes, Shyamalan enthusiasts have been rewarded with a B-movie-fueled comeback story that's resulted in several significant box office wins.
Now, his latest feature, Trap -- a thriller starring Josh Hartnett as a notorious serial killer who learns the walls are closing in on him while attending a pop concert with his daughter -- is set to hit theaters Aug. 2. In an interview with IndieWire, Shyamalan spoke about how Trap, like many of his films, is an exploration of the "darker things we experience in life."
"There are car accidents; there are random crimes; there are people with no empathy," he said. "Trying to make sense of it and still keep my the-world-is-a-benevolent-place philosophy intact. Is there any light in darkness, let's say, in this movie? In those places -- those abysses, those black holes -- of empathy. Is there any light there?"
Still, many who flock to Trap will do so in anticipation of its expected twist. So, in honor of this new release, we're ranking every Shyamalan twist that has preceded it. This list only includes films that were both directed by Shyamalan and include a game-changing surprise reveal -- which precludes his debut feature Praying With Anger, follow-up Wide Awake, and blockbusters The Last Airbender and After Earth. It's also important to note that the ranking -- presented in order from worst to best -- is based on the strength of the twist itself rather than the movie as a whole.
Obviously, major spoilers ahead for all of Shyamalan's films.
In theory, this is a movie about impending environmental catastrophe. In execution, it's a movie about plants attacking humanity by releasing airborne neurotoxins that trick people into killing themselves. The Happening stars a miscast Mark Wahlberg as Elliot Moore, a high school science teacher who, less than an hour in, figures out the twist: that pissed-off trees and grass, not terrorists, are responsible for the mass suicide events unfolding across the American Northeast. The film opened to what has been referred to as "near-universal derision" when it hit theaters in 2008. Today, you'll find the eco-horror flick has its defenders. But the common consensus remains that its languid curveball is not one for the books.
Building on the bridge between 2000's Unbreakable and 2017's Split that was established in the latter's surprise final scene, Shyamalan delivers a conclusion to his dark superhero trilogy. This culmination lands identity-shifter Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) and vigilante David Dunn (Bruce Willis) in the same Philadelphia psychiatric hospital where Dunn's friend-turned-nemesis Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) has been held for over 15 years. There, Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) tries to convince the trio that there's no such thing as superheroes or supervillains or anything of the sort. The movie zigzags when it turns out Staple is part of a shadowy organization intent on keeping the existence of superhumans secret. All three mains end up dead, but the truth, of course, still outs -- and, in the process, puts a weirdly heroic spin on Price's Unbreakable-era atrocities. It's a twist that, as TIME film critic Stephanie Zacharek put it, is "really just more of a damp wrinkle."
The movie that launched a thousand "the beach that makes you old" memes. Old follows a family vacationing at a luxury tropical resort who, alongside a number of other tourists, are lured to a secluded beach that ages you one year for every 30 minutes you spend there. The group -- including Gael García Bernal's Guy, Vicky Krieps' Prisca, and Ken Leung's Jarin -- soon discovers that any attempts to leave result in mysterious blackouts and that several of them have underlying medical conditions that begin rapidly progressing as the day goes on. The twist? This is all the work of a pharmaceutical company attempting to accelerate lifelong drug trials by spiking guests' drinks with medication and then sending them to the sandy death trap to observe what happens. The whole thing is a body horror-fueled mess that's incredibly over the top. But it also feels like Shyamalan fully leaning into his campiest impulses, and on that level, it kind of works!
When four armed strangers show up at the remote cabin that married couple Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge) are vacationing at with their young daughter Wen (Kristen Cui), the family is forced to decide whether the intruders' apocalyptic warning -- that if they don't make the impossible choice to sacrifice a member of their family, it's game over for humanity -- is a delusion of Internet-conspiracy theorists, or a prelude to the end of the world. What ensues is 90 minutes of taxing back and forth during which viewers are left to guess and second-guess what they believe to be true right alongside Knock's protagonists.
The movie is based on Paul Tremblay's 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World, but diverges from its award-winning source material in a way that makes for a much less interesting conclusion. In the end, the strangers are right, and Eric's willing sacrifice grants humanity an instant reprieve from God's wrath. The lack of a major twist subverts expectations and, in doing so, serves as a twist in itself -- if not a very satisfying one.
There's a lot wrong with Lady in the Water: a goofy fairy tale-inspired narrative, Shyamalan pointedly casting himself as a writer who holds the fate of the world in his hands, the inclusion of CGI wolf-monsters that are for some reason called "scrunts." But Paul Giamatti's tender performance as Cleveland Heep, a grieving husband and father left to while away his days as a lowly apartment building superintendent after his family's murder, almost makes up for all that. For the purposes of this list, the film's twist -- that the complex's eccentric residents, and particularly Cleveland, all have their own role to play in securing the safe return of Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), a sea nymph who Cleveland discovered in the pool one night, to her mythical homeland -- doesn't rank very high. But the movie as a whole deserves a second look for those who are willing to see past its flaws.
Is it a bit hokey that extraterrestrial beings with advanced intelligence would choose to try to invade a planet where water, the substance that's their kryptonite, covers more than 70 percent of the surface? Definitely. Does it take away from the climactic final confrontation between the Hess family and their lone alien attacker? Yeah, kind of. But if you're able to ignore the nonsensical nature of the idea that Shyamalan's martians can be mortally wounded by tap water and are easily thwarted by wooden boards, Signs' Spielberg-esque denouement makes for a wild ride to the finish.
After all, the aliens' water weakness is just one reveal in a rapid-fire series of many that lead grieving husband and former pastor Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) to the conclusion that all the seemingly coincidental tragedies of his life have actually been turns of fate that would one day save the life of his son, Morgan (Rory Culkin). The movie's "everything happens for a reason" narrative might feel a little preachy -- especially when you factor in that final scene of Graham, having apparently regained his Christian faith, once again donning his clergy garb. But given the fact that Shyamalan himself is, in his own words, "not religious at all," Signs can be viewed on a broader level as an examination of the idea of collective destiny and, once again in Shyamalan's own words, "the universe and our place in it."
After years of playing what he referred to as "posh English dudes," James McAvoy exploded onto the horror-thriller scene as Kevin Wendell Crumb, a man suffering from a severe case of dissociative identity disorder who abducts three teenage girls (Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson, and Jessica Sula) and holds them captive in an underground bunker. As his 23 alternate personalities fight for control of his mind and body, a 24th, the never-before-seen personality known only as "the Beast," threatens to emerge. At first, talk of the Beast seems to be just that, talk. But in the movie's first twist, when Kevin's final form eventually does rear its head, it turns out the rumors of his fearsome superhuman abilities haven't been exaggerated.
Split has drawn fire for its depiction of mental illness and exploiting the trauma of childhood sexual abuse (the Beast spares Taylor-Joy's Casey as she has "suffered" and is therefore "pure"). But Shyamalan also added a secondary twist that -- for better or worse, depending on what type of viewer you are -- turned the movie into a stealth sequel to Unbreakable. The film's final scene flashes to a diner where customers are watching a news report about the Beast's attack on Philadelphia. A waitress reflects on the seemingly supervillainous similarities between Crumb and "that crazy guy in the wheelchair they put away 15 years ago," prompting Bruce Willis' David Dunn, who just so happens to be sitting right there, to offer up the man's nickname: "Mr. Glass."
The premise of The Village is simple: In an isolated settlement meant to evoke 19th-century rural Pennsylvania, a tight-knit community lives in fear of "those we don't speak of," the vengeful creatures that are said to inhabit the woods surrounding their home. This keeps even the bravest among them, like the intrepid young Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix), from venturing to the forbidden towns that lie beyond the forest. That is, until Lucius falls victim to a tragic attack and his betrothed, Ivy Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard), the blind daughter of village elder Edward Walker (William Hurt), is compelled to seek out the medicines that could save him. When Ivy finally makes it beyond the trees' borders, a car pulls up and the big reveal ensues. In reality, it's modern day and the elders set this whole thing up to purposefully cut themselves and their families off from the dangerous outside world.
Following a string of critical smashes, The Village was Shyamalan's first major film to garner significant backlash -- including criticism for its portrayal of Adrien Brody's developmentally disabled character Noah Percy -- and is cited by some as the beginning of his career's downward trajectory. In retrospect, it seems like a lot of that could be attributed to a combination of Big Twist fatigue and the fact that Shyamalan's audiences were likely expecting a straight horror-thriller when what they got was more of a pseudo-horror romance with a reveal that zapped away much of the story's fear factor. The Village's twist is both somewhat absurd and too obvious, but it still works for what Shyamalan seemed to be going for with the story. In the words of the late Hurt: "It isn't the story twists that actually grab you. What grabs you is something a lot deeper. It says a lot about community, it says a lot about fear, it says a lot about how parents want to keep their children loved and safe. How we are valiantly trying to find lesser fears with which to prevent greater ones, and how we carry those scars with us and they reinvent themselves."
Following the critical misfires of The Last Airbender and After Earth, Shyamalan's first offering under Blumhouse's low-budget, high-concept horror model resulted in his best-reviewed film in over a decade. The found footage-style thriller documents the week that teenagers Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) spend at the home of their estranged grandparents. Although the siblings have never met their "Nana" (Deanna Dunagan) and "Pop Pop" (Peter McRobbie) before, the couple at first seems normal enough. But when they begin to exhibit increasingly disturbing behavior, it prompts Becca and Tyler to video call their mom (Kathryn Hahn) and beg for her to pick them up. It's then they realize the people they've been staying with aren't their grandparents at all, a reveal that makes for an effectively chilling final act.
Before massive new superhero blockbusters became routine, there was Unbreakable. Shyamalan's masterful follow-up to his Sixth Sense breakthrough traces the rise of Philadelphia security guard David Dunn (Bruce Willis) from directionless former football prodigy to vigilante crime fighter accepting of his real-life superpowers. This is accomplished with the help of Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a comic-book art gallery owner born with a rare genetic disorder that makes his bones extremely brittle and prone to fracture. He's a foil for David, one who helps him realize there's a reason he survived a train wreck that killed everyone else on board and has lived his life with little to no injury or illness. Except, it turns out Elijah was responsible for that horrible railway accident, as well as a number of other mass casualty events he orchestrated in hopes of discovering that someone like David existed.
When Elijah ultimately reveals himself, you can see the horror of realization in David's eyes, that the friend who guided him on this quest of self-discovery is also the man responsible for these heinous acts. It's an origin story for both superhero and supervillain, with a resonant closing monologue about the nature of comic-book good and evil. "Now that we know who you are, I know who I am," Elijah muses. "I should've known way back when. You know why, David? Because of the kids...They called me Mr. Glass."
These days, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone remotely familiar with film culture who doesn't already know that Bruce Willis' character is dead pretty much the whole movie. But when The Sixth Sense arrived on the horror scene in 1999 with relative newcomer Shyamalan at its helm, its final five minutes were a revelation. The Oscar-nominated thriller features career-defining performances from Willis as Dr. Malcolm Crowe, an award-winning child psychiatrist whose commitment to his work has left his wife playing second fiddle; Haley Joel Osment as Malcolm's troubled young patient Cole Sear, a boy cursed with the ability to see and speak to dead people; and Toni Collette as Cole's mother Lynn, a woman desperate to help her increasingly withdrawn son while struggling with her own trauma. It's a ghost story. But it's also a profound meditation on grief, regret, fear, and the longing to fix what cannot be changed. The final gotcha -- when Malcolm at long last realizes his true fate -- is well-earned and, as far as twists go, Shyamalan's best work. But it's The Sixth Sense's emotional core that cements it as a timeless masterpiece.
