The Eleventh Day-- What A Twist!

That's right, if you hadn't guessed by the title (but you wouldn't get the reference if you don't watch Robot Chicken), I'm gonna talk about M. Night Shyamalan, and my supreme hatred of his movies. Unlike his movies my blog WON'T have some shitty twist ending where you find out I actually love his films.  Furthermore, I will openly warn you now, that I intend to be an asshole and tell the ending of his movies for two reasons: one, you probably already know them and two, if you don't I plan on saving you some time to go watch some GOOD movies. You'll know the ending, you won't have to sit through the rest. If you really REALLY want to watch them still, stop now and move along and no harm will be done.

Okay, I'll now give you a bit of background about this Indian-American man (I'll need to consult Wikipedia, I certainly have no information about him in my head).  Shyamalan was born Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan in 1970 in Puduchery India. He spent his childhood in Philidelphia, Pennsylvania and attended school at New York University. ANYWAY... I think that's about all you REALLY need to know about him.

Let's start now with his break through movie The Sixth Sense. This was probably his most decent film, telling the story of a little boy who can see the ghosts of the wrongfully dead, who then ask for his help in correcting their end. Bruce Willis plays the boy's counselor, and, what do you know, it turns out that HE was dead the entire time! Shocking. Now this film wasn't all bad, the acting was decent, the story was intriguing and the twist was unexpected. The downfall of this film is the fact that once you know the ending, you might as well not bother watching it and of course EVERYONE spilled the secret immediately, thanks a ton world! Now with this paragraph you're probably thinking, "oh, he isn't THAT harsh on Shyamalan" haha, just wait, it gets worse, as his films do.

Speaking of "worse", let's move onto Signs. First off, let's talk about one major flaw with this movie... It stars Mel Gibson (blegh). The second problem with the movie is the fact that it is all aliens (and you should know I think aliens are a total cop out). I don't want to know that the writers of a movie are so uncreative that they choose aliens to explain the unexplainable. Finally, a major downfall of the movie is the fact that water kills the aliens. You would think a race that is smart enough to make it here from, God knows where, would know not to invade a planet that's mostly water... If water is their one weakness (maybe I'M the only one thy would think that). One plus of the movie is Joaquin Phoenix, in my opinion he is a fairly good actor, and anyone who is willing to nearly ruin their career to make a movie gets respect from me. Overall though, the movie wasn't my thing (to say the least) even though it got pretty good critical reviews.

So, now on to the The Village.  Yet another Shyamalan film that Joaquin Phoenix could not save.  The one major flaw with this film is the twist ending, one that has already been done before in a children's book called Running Out of Time by Margret Peterson Haddix.  The story is that of a colonial town that no one can leave due to a monster that stalks the surrounding woods.  When one of the young girls finally gets out, she discovers that the town is actually in modern times and the only reason she couldn't leave was because the adults of the town wanted to keep the children away from modern problems.  Everything but the monster was already in Haddix's book.  Not necessarily a problem, but I dislike Shyamalan, so the lack of originality is a strike... AND the movie was just poorly done overall.

Next up is Lady in the Water.  It's a modern take on a fairy tale, with a man finding a water nymph and setting up a group of people to protect her from a wolf creature trying to kill her.  This one doesn't really have the "Shyamalan twist" but the movie was horrible AND got very low critical reviews.  Even though the movie was largely a disappointment, I couldn't totally hate it.  I like Paul Giamatti AND I was intrigued by the story (I'm usually interested in fantasy and fairy tales).  The movie was in no way a good movie, but it wasn't the worst movie ever by Shyamalan.

The Happening is an excellent example of a horrible Shyamalan film (and really just film in general).  Not only did this pathetic piece of cinema have awful acting, but an equally awful story.  One thing about this film was all of the "hubub" about the fact that it was Shyamalan's first R-rated movie (oh God! it's rated R! whatever will he do?!?!?! I can't WAIT to see what kind of CCCRRRRAAAAZZZYYY stuff he can do with an R rating!!).  Anyway, the R rating didn't help this film at all, nothing in this film even really deserved the R rating.  The most violence that was shown was the implication that a man was run over by a lawnmower.  PLUS, I don't know why an R rating would make a movie more interesting anyway, you can add more hard hitting subject matter, but if you can tell a good enough story, it doesn't matter WHAT the film is rated.  The acting was so bad, I mean the film starred Mark Wahlberg (who I will admit isn't ALWAYS awful) and John Leguizamo.  The plot is what really did it for me though, I thought that the idea that a neurotoxin that made people kill themselves was interesting (and luckily the alien cop out wasn't used for this one).  What ruined it was the fact that the neurotoxin came from the plants... and on top of THAT, is the fact that the main characters could out run it... AND were safe when inside (even though OTHER characters weren't safe inside).  More or less this movie deserved the horrible critical response it got... please, do yourself a favor and never watch this movie.

Finally I'll talk about The Last Airbender.  Now if you weren't aware, this movie is based off of a Nickelodeon cartoon called Avatar: The Last Airbender.  Now what Shyamalan did with this film is take a pretty bad, but not totally horrible cartoon and make it into a really awful movie.  The CGI was bad, the acting was bad, the pronunciation of the names was off, the story was off, pretty much everything was off.  The ONLY thing that was interesting was the bending itself, it was kind of cool to see fire and water flying around (but that's literally the ONLY thing that was done decently).  I'm not even going to say more about this film.

I haven't seen Devil or any of Shyamalan's other films, but I doubt I need to (I didn't even know how to spell Shyamalan til I did this post, another useless thing I know now).  ANYWAY... this is a message for Mr. Night Shymalan himself...

M... can I call you M? Please, PLEASE stop, for the love of God stop making films... they progressively get worse and no one wants to sit through them anymore.  Do the world a favor and get a more helpful job, please.

If you think this post is harsh I'm very sorry.  There are a lot of things I like about India (like their delicious food) but M. Night Shyamalan isn't one... and if you were waiting for a twist... fine, I'll give you one.  I, in no way, like the music of Seal, but whenever I hear "Kiss From a Rose" it takes me back to when I was 5 years old and Batman Forever came out.  Now in my previous comic movie post I told you how horrible the original Batman films were (and I stick by that), but when I was 5, they were the shit.  I loved them and that song reminds me of being a child and how much I loved super heros (mainly Batman) and movies.  That's why I'll always (kind of) like that song... Unfortunately that was ALL unimportant, but there it is.

You guys have a wonderful day and if you LOVE M. Night Shyamalan, feel free to call me a bastard.