I didn't really have much time to write yesterday. Been kinda busy. But I wanted to reflect a little bit on the work of the great genius M. Night Shyamalan. Mainly because after going through the special features, I have learned that "Devil" is only the first of an apparent trilogy called "The Night Chronicles". So finally, I found something scary.
It had been a while since I've watched a film and actually felt what the characters were going through. The last time I think was during "The Happening". Through most of that, the characters were wondering about the things that were going on, confused as to why they were occuring. I certainly empathized. I myself couldn't figure out what the hell was happening. And much like the characters, I just wanted it to stop and be over with.
I doubt, however, that this was the director's purpose. There had been much hype about how this was his first ever R-rated film, which stands for "restricted". Someone should have restricted him from making it. There was too much focus on the "R-rated" part than the "film" part.
I thought at the time that Shyamalan should stop doing everything himself and start working with another writer. As it turned out, he actually let another director take charge of "Devil" while he produced it. So I guess it turns out that I was wrong. I think Shyamalan should probably just stop altogether.
I was thinking more about trying a different genre though. If you've ever seen his early film called "Wide Awake", that happened to be a Disney film and it worked very well. It was also able to explore some of the same themes shared in his other works - religion, faith and doubt.
"The Happening" came out around the same time as "I Want to Believe", and I think it would have been interesting if M. Night and Chris Carter had each other's material for their movies. The plot for "The Happening" was more of an X-File than the last X-Files movie. And I would like to see Shyamalan directing a less fantastic, more realistic mass murderer hunt movie.
I don't know if "I Want to Believe" needed to be made anyway. Apart from the characters, it didn't really feel like "The X-Files" at all. The filmmakers should have challenged themselves by having the characters of John Doggett and Monica Reyes involved, I think. Or they should have moved on after David Duchovny left the show and should have stopped stringing the audience along in hopes that Mulder would come back.
So anyway, what was my point?
I really liked "Wide Awake" when it first came out and I didn't even know or care who directed it. I liked "The Sixth Sense", too. I didn't even see the ending coming, although most people apparently knew what was going to happen in the first few minutes. I didn't see the first five though, so maybe that's why?
I even liked "Unbreakable" even though some people thought it was simply stupid. I've only seen it once though. It was at the theatre with a bunch of my friends, and we happened to be in a great mood at the time. So maybe that's why I didn't hate it.
His first films were pretty decent, I guess, but his movies lately have been terrible. The difference between his early and recent works is - here it comes - night and day. Get it?
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