M Night Shymalan Retrospective (Part 1)

This segment is dedicated to, for better or worse, one of the most interesting filmmaking careers in recent history. Because I'm reviewing numerous movies at once, I'll attempt to be brief. Also, while I usually try to avoid this, plot spoilers follow. It's necessary when discussing a body of work known best for it plot twists.

Wide Awake:

This is Shymalan's first major movie as a writer and director. I'm excluding Praying with Anger because it never made major release and has been quite difficult to find. Before the name M. Night Shymalan was synonymous with plot twists and supernatural suspense, he made a family movie about a young boy's search for God. After the  death of a loved one causes him to question his mortality, Catholic schoolboy Joshua Beal (Joseph Cross) looks to every possible source of wisdom in his life for some understanding on that ever-elusive concept of God.  Along the way he experiences good and bad times, wins the affection of his first crush, and faces mortality in ways that are pretty bold for a children's movie. The movie offers no concrete answers and, in true Shymalan fashion, ends with a surprise.

Overall this is a movie I recommend, but with reservation. The premise is clever and the movie offers a sincere look at the quest for religious and personal validation from a  child's perspective. Joshua's youthful wonder feels genuine and adds a bit of depth to a movie that could have easily sunk to Lifetime original movie levels of sentimentality with the wrong lead. This movies introduces two themes that  are cornerstones of Shymalan's work. The first is a fascination with the supernatural, which is explored with an intriguing mix of maturity and childhood levity. The second is a three-dimensional portrayal of children as realistically flawed characters.

At the same time, this is very obviously a children's movie, so a lot of scenes are spent on silly or goofy situations that distract from the plot. Side characters like Rosie O'Donnell's sports-loving nun try to offer comic relief, but most of the movie's humor is aimed at viewers under twelve, so anyone else won't get much entertainment out of these diversions aside from maybe finding them mildly cute. One scene, for example, features a kid with "problems" jumping around imitating a monkey. It's too ridiculous to be believable and too juvenile to laugh at. That said, Wide Awake isn't completely lacking in decent humor, but the scenes that are too obviously aimed at children feel forced in Shymalan's script.

All in all this is a solid children's movie that's unique in some ways and generic in others. If you find the premise of religion through a child's eyes intriguing then it may well be worth a view. For everyone else, the generic family movie elements might outweigh the parts of the movie that genuinely work. For someone like me who had somehow overlooked this movie until now, it was a mildly pleasant surprise.

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The Sixth Sense:

If any movie is synonymous with Shymalan, it's his second major feature, though I'd hardly blame anyone for calling it his debut. This film continues Shymalan's exploration of the unknown though the relationship between two characters: Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment,) a young boy with coping with his ability to see the dead, and Dr. Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist looking to make up for failing a previous patient. The story focuses primarily on Malcolm teaching Cole how to live with his power and use it help others while the two struggle with their own problems.

Cole continues Shymalan's tradition of well-written child characters and Haley Joel Osment breathes boundless life and creativity into the character. He gives a sympathetic yet creepy creepy performance that really sells the psychological toll that Cole's unique ability has. The amount of subtle emotion he's capable of conveying with his eyes alone is impressive for an actor of any age. Bruce Willis gives easily one of the better performances of his career, adding a tense seriousness to his usual lighthearted, wisecracking style.  The scene with Malcolm's mind-reading game perfectly communicates the dynamic between the two characters perfectly, giving away a lot of character detail with little more than glances and gestures. Olivia Williams gives a cleverly understated performance as Malcolm's wife and widow, selling her character's grief with a quiet dignity.

The soundtrack and cinematography are excellent, slowly creating an atmosphere of tension that pays off marvelously in the third act. The ghosts are, for the most part, excellently done, with only one or two over-the-top moments. The horror elements are slow to build after the first scene and the movie doesn't really get scary until the third act. The pacing is deliberately slow to give the horror a deeper sense of realism and let us know the characters on a more personal level. Like the best thriller directors, Shymalan understands that the heart of any good horror story is a good relationship story. 

The plot twist is one of the best in the history of cinema. It works so effectively for a number of reasons, mainly because it's so inconceivable in foresight but so obvious in retrospect. Even before the twist, the plot feels complete, so the set-up for the twist never feels too obvious. And when the revelation does come, it forces the reader to look back on the plot in a way that gives it a deeper meaning. The whole thing is paralleled in a coin trick that Malcolm shows Cole; he makes a coin "vanish" and "reappear" only for Cole to point out that the coin never left his hand. A good plot twist is like a good magic trick: if you can see through the misdirection it's the most obvious thing in the world. Think about it: the movie begins with Malcolm getting shot and ends with the revelation that he's dead, and yet when it happens it's still a surprise.

This is easily the highlight of Shymalan's career, and if it weren't for a pesky thing called hindsight I'd say it's a promising sign of bigger things to come. As hyperbolic as this may sound, this may very well be the best work of supernatural horror since Jacob's Ladder.

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to be continued very soon with reviews of Unbreakable and Signs