It has been 22 years since a psychological thriller hit theaters with an excellent cast, but it ended up polarizing fans thanks to its controversial twist ending. M. Night Shyamalan built his career on twist endings. This all started with his third movie, his breakout hit The Sixth Sense, a film with one of the best twists in all of thriller movie history. His next hit was the cult classic 2000 superhero movie Unbreakable, which had a minor twist as well. However, following his sci-fi movie Signs, where the twist was how to beat the aliens, it seemed Shyamalan was relying too heavily on twists. This came crashing down when one twist seemed a little too far, and fans started to turn on the director.
In Shyamalan’s The Village, the unexpected twist ending made sense based on the clues in the movie, but it threw the entire movie out of whack, and many fans rejected it outright.
M. Night Shyamalan Jumped the Shark with His Twist in The Village
Released on July 30, 2004, The Village was Shyamalan’s sixth movie, and the first after Signs. It was also the first Shyamalan movie to receive poor reviews since his breakout with The Sixth Sense, and it started a string of failures for the once promising director. On the surface, The Village appeared to be a historical horror thriller, set in 19th-century Pennsylvania in a small remote village where the people lived in fear of a creature that supposedly inhabited the surrounding woods. However, the twist proved that this was not the case, and most fans and critics dismissed it when the twist arrived.
The movie had a great cast, so the acting was superb, and the film had a solid story and smart clues laid throughout the story. It wasn’t enough. Bryce Dallas Howard stars as Ivy Elizabeth Walker, a young woman betrothed to a man who was attacked and stabbed, so she was sent to venture to a nearby village to find medical supplies. Along with Howard, the movie also stars three Oscar-winning actors, with Joaquin Phoenix (Joker) as Ivy’s fiancé, Lucius, Adrien Brody (The Pianist and The Brutalist) as Noah Percy, the man who stabs Lucius, and William Hurt (Kiss of the Spider Woman) as Ivy’s father, Edward Walker.
This movie lived and died by its twist, and it was a smart one, although it made many fans feel betrayed when it played out. The twist is simple. This is not the 19th century, and this village is in the middle of a wildlife reserve in the present day. The village elders know the secret and hold evidence of this in locked boxes they possess. They have lied to their children and descendants, lying about the year they live in to protect them from the evil of the real world.
Critics gave The Village poor reviews, with the movie sitting at 43% on Rotten Tomatoes and an only slightly higher 57% audience score. The critical consensus is that the movie is creepy enough, but the twist ending was disappointing. This was a successful release at the box office, but this was the last success Shyamalan would see for years, with fans turning their backs on the man once known as the “next Steven Spielberg” in movie circles.
It Took M. Night Shyamalan Years to Bounce Back After The Village
People loved the twist in The Sixth Sense, and while Unbreakable and Signs had small twists, they weren’t as massive as The Sixth Sense or The Village. While The Sixth Sense’s twist was what brought Shyamalan fans back for more, The Village turned fans away en masse. Shyamalan’s next movie was called Lady in the Water, with Howard returning, and it was a box office failure, with critics criticizing the script and the movie receiving four Razzie nominations.
The Happening was next, four years after The Village, and it remains known as one of the worst movies Shyamalan ever directed for several reasons. Shyamalan was attempting a B-grade disaster movie with the shocking twist that the Earth was fighting back against humans who had polluted it for years. It had a bigger box office than Lady in the Water, but its reviews were terrible, with a critical Rotten Tomatoes score of 17% and a 24% audience score. Shyamalan kept getting opportunities, and his next two movies were bigger budget affairs that almost ended his career.
In 2010, he remade The Last Airbender for the big screen, and while it broke $319 million at the worldwide box office, it had a $150 million budget and only grossed $131.7 million domestically, a massive disappointment. Three years later, Shyamalan directed After Earth, starring Will Smith and Jaden Smith, and while it had larger international numbers, its $60.5 million was a massive failure, especially for a movie starring Smith, who called it his “most painful failure.”
It was clear that Shyamalan had to get back to his roots if he wanted to regain control over his career. This happened in 2015 when he directed the low-budget found footage horror movie The Visit. This was 11 years after the disappointment of The Village, and this sparked interest and brought back some old Shyamalan supporters. In 2016, he returned to the world of Unbreakable with Split, and he regained the career that seemed so promising after The Sixth Sense.
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