M. Night Shyamalan doesn’t leave much room for nuance. He never has. You can see that much in the critical and audience responses to his now two decades of filmmaking, beginning with “The Sixth Sense” in 1999. You can also see it in the films themselves, whose quality so often hinge entirely on whether you buy a startling third-act answer to a question you may never have asked.
But in a career shaped by its exhilarating highs and laughable lows — all seeming products of the same directorial and screenwriting ambition — this January sees Shyamalan’s risking-taking inhabit a new form: a late-blooming cinematic universe of his own design.
On this episode of Be Reel, Chance and Noah take apart “Glass” and look back at the under-appreciated “Unbreakable” (2000) and the sleeper hit “Split” (2016) to try and understand what point, if any, Night is trying to make about super-hero franchises by connecting the characters of David Dunn, The Horde, and Mr. Glass.
Be Reel is also joined this week by The Guardian contributor Zach Vasquez, who’s on hand to unpack his terrific essay on deconstructionism in comic-book movies and Hollywood film booms at large.
As always, Chance and Noah use their two-tiered rating system to try and understand why Night has staying power and the ability to reinvent himself every few years. For every “After Earth” is a quiet, more clever “The Visit.” And is “Glass” going to do the same kind of business as “The Sixth Sense” or “Signs” just because of the time of year it’s released?
Has Night lost the thread entirely? Or, wait for it, was there ever even a thread at all …
