Hence The Happening, in which someone posits early on that the trees are making people kill themselves… and the movie plods on from there to the conclusion that yes, that is in fact what is actually going on.
Didn’t we all realize that Shyamalan was telling stories that were going to Change The World? How very dare audiences and film critics especially not appreciate this! (This was the plot of Lady in the Water.) And so, his movies seemed to start saying in their metatext: “Oh, you don’t want twists anymore? Fine. This should have worked out just fine - most movies do not feature big twists - but Shyamalan managed to make this shift in his work feel spiteful. Because, fair enough: it’s tough to be that clever over and over again. But then, after a brief foray into movies in which the twists are all they have going for them - *cough* The Village *cough* - the filmmaker shifted gears to making movies without big twists. The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable: these were and remain dynamic, commanding works of cinema even without their twist endings the twists only deepen their power. The mind boggles, how Shyamalan started out making movies that were absolutely incredible, dense with emotion and mystery, as fun as they were profound. Night Shyamalan movie without a twist ending. Night Shyamalan movie with a twist ending. If Oscar Wilde was alive and writing film criticism today, he might say something like this:
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