When I Googled “The Shyamalan Effect” I expected to find a New Yorker article diving deep into the cinematic and cultural impact of M. Night Shyamalan and his movies. Instead, I found a definition in Urban Dictionary that defined “The Shyamalan Effect” as “the feeling of disgust after climax when watching porn”.
God bless the internet.
I would describe expectations of his movies combined with divisive audience reactions after the release of Shyamalan’s movies — specifically his latest, Trap — as “The Shyamalan Effect”… but no porn is involved.
After The Sixth Sense debuted in 1999, movie audiences were gobsmacked by Shyamalan and his Hitchcockian ways, and from then on out, the “big twist” expectation was placed upon the filmmaker with each and every one of his films. It seems like if there wasn’t a Sixth Sense twist or if the twist weren’t good enough, his movie would be considered a failure.
Everyone is always horny for the big twist in a Shyamalan movie and he delivers for the most part. We saw it in the world-building Unbreakable (2000), the alien invasion thriller Signs (2002), and the homeland security parable The Village (2004). After that, things started to get rocky with Lady in the Water (2006), The Happening (2008), The Last Airbender (2010), and After Earth (2013).
It wasn’t until Shyamalan’s The Visit in 2015 that it seemed like people started to back off. Now with Universal, the found footage “To Grandma’s House We Go” horror pic received critical acclaim and grossed $98.5 million on a $5 million budget (we’ll get to that later).
After that, the Notorious M.N.S. would crank out films that were kind of like artists from Cash Money Records. Some of them were bangers like Juvenile while others were not so bangin’. However, you appreciated their contributions to the brand… like Bow Wow.
Over a decade after Unbreakable, Shyamalan bookended his Eastrail 177 Trilogy with Split (2016) and Glass (2019). The former received more favorable reviews than the latter while his recent films Old (2021) and Knock on the Cabin (2023) raked in a collective “meh” from audiences and critics.
Even though his movies have been booed by critics, Shyamalan seems unfazed. Not because he doesn’t care, but because he is expressing his artistic freedom and taking risks in an industry that has been wildly risk averse as of late — all while making a nice amount of coin along the way. He’s doing exactly what he wants to do and has possibly found the perfect intersection of art and commerce that works for him — but he also had the financial heft to do so since The Sixth Sense which grossed over $670 million globally on a $40 million budget.
For the most part, this became a trend with all his movies, Unbreakable, which had a budget of $75 million and would gross nearly $250 million at the global box office. Signs and The Village reaped in cash and even some of his most poorly reviewed movies The Happening and The Last Airbender raked in a ridiculous amount at the global box office.
The big change is when he used the same formula but put his skin in the game. He self-financed or partly self-financed his films since 2015 with The Visit, sculpting a “high risk, high-reward, low-budget” model of filmmaking which has continued to pay off — and Trap adds to the bank. It’s been nearly a month since its release and the film, which had a reported budget of $30 million, hit $45.3 million at the global box office as of the writing of this article. (It may not be gangbusters at the box office, but hey, it broke even).
During an interview with Collider in 2021 while promoting Old, Shyamalan broke it down: “I paid for Visit, Split, Glass, and Old — all four of those — and I pay for Servant as well. The reason that I do it is.. to do it at the smallest number where I can be free and I can do something provocative and different and unusual and I’m not putting my partners at risk. I’m taking the risk.”
He continued, “In most scenarios, because we’re doing it at such a small price, we’re going to be okay no matter what. So we can make the most interesting art… I believe the flip happens where the audience can feel that it’s different. [There are] no safety valves on it. There [are] no safety guard rails on it. They can feel that there is no supervision and it’s this kind of free-spirited thing. I believe audiences can feel that and that’s why they’ve been coming to these movies.”
He’s right.
Essentially by funding his own films, he has the freedom to use all the toys in the sandbox rather than be limited to a bucket and a shovel. He takes big swings and misses (The Lady in the Water) and he also takes big swings that garner a cult following (the aforementioned Eastrail 177 Trilogy).
He created a brand and a vibe that people will buy because, like him, we’re open to taking that risk — and we have the right to criticize But at the end of the day, if Shyamalan “fails” in terms of a film, at least he can say he’s proud of his failure because at least he knows he did it with artistic integrity (minus The Last Airbender, maybe) and he took a risk — something that is so foreign to the industry right now.
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Since Shyamalan released The Sixth Sense, he has proven his knack for casting. Being in an M Night film is comparable to being in a Marvel film. However, Shyamalan tends to anoint actors in a way that bolsters their profile despite the critical response to the film. It actually feels like the actors are having fun in their roles. Dare I say, the actors actually feel like they are having a good time and are excited to be there.
He also introduces (or re-introduces) us to phenomenal talent and showcases them in the best way possible. It took me a minute to realize that it was Muriel from Muriel’s Wedding (Toni Collette) who was the mom in The Sixth Sense when I first watched. The movie made Haley Joel Osment a star — and a child actor who seemed stable and put together considering the Hollywood of it all. The pic made Bruce Willis a superhero and built a superhero/villain cinematic universe around him, Samuel L. Jackson, and James McAvoy long before The Infinity Saga.
He also gave us ensembles that we never knew we needed. I mean, Mark Wahlberg, Zoe Deschanel, and John Leguizamo starred alongside legend Betty Buckley in The Happening. They made for an unexpected group that was fun to watch despite the movie being one of the clunkers.
Buckley also appeared in Split with McAvoy and the two actors are part of Shyamalan’s stock company which also includes Jackson and Willis. The Village opened up his ensemble even more with a roster that was a mix of acting icons and up-and-comers of the time. This included Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt Brendan Gleeson, Adrien Brody, Cherry Jones, Judy Greer, Michael Pitt, and Jessie Eisenberg. Joaquin Phoenix appeared in the pic having starred in Signs. Bryce Dallas Howard also starred and went on to be in Lady in the Water.
The Shyamalan Sandbox has continued to be an ideal destination for actors to play with movies like Old starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Vickey Krieps and Knock at the Cabin which serves another enjoyable mix of actors that includes Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Dave Bautista, Rupert Grint, and Nikki Amuka-Bird — who also appeared in Old!
With Trap, it feels like he is kicking off another franchise (or maybe it’s already connected and we just don’t know!) with Josh Hartnett as his muse. The actor was a late ’90s/early ’00s “it boy” with titles like Halloween H20 and 40 Days and 40 Nights to his name that sparked feels for a nostalgic intersection of Millennials and Gen X’ers. For me, it’s The Faculty and the Lucky Number Slevin of it all.
After a string of movies, Hartnett became a Hollywood heartthrob. He was giving River Phoenix vibes, exuding commercial appeal but maintaining a sense of mystery. At one point, he was going to don an “S” on his chest for an iteration of Superman, but he turned down the role twice. He was also up for the role of Christopher Nolan’s Batman as well as The Prestige (both roles went to Christian Bale).
He didn’t necessarily disappear, but he kept Hollywood at arm’s length. I look at his IMDb page as I write this and do not recognize the majority of the titles except the commercial ones peppered throughout — not shade. It just shows that Hartnett obviously wanted to work outside of the system and do things on his terms and through his artistry after his heartthrob era.
It only makes sense that he and Shyamalan be a good match for Trap — a film that opens a new chapter in the filmmaker’s career — as well as Hartnett’s. After staying on Hollywood’s radar with more genre projects like Peaky Blinders, he is having the spotlight follow him instead of the other way around. In the past year, Hartnett has appeared in an episode of Black Mirror, had a role in the Oscar-winning Oppenheimer, and popped up in The Bear.
What could be considered “stunt casting” to some is smart casting to me as it targets nostalgic xennials like myself who still love going to movie theaters. On top of that, we get to see someone we crushed on hardcore in the ’00s by this creepy guy in a movie that The Sixth Sense dude directed. All the while, we get to see Miss Bliss herself bring this motherfucker down… or should I say Parent TRAP this motherfucker.
In another case of “a duo I didn’t know I needed, it’s Mr. Hartnett and the legendary Hayley Mills (she and I have the same birthday btw). She starred in the unofficial Saved by the Bell prequel Good Morning Miss Bliss and became a household name in the ’60s starring in the original Parent Trap that paved the way for Lindsay Lohan.
In the film, she plays the FBI profiler Dr. Grant who is the cat to Hartnett’s mouse, a guy named Cooper who is not only a serial killer dad but a cool serial killer dad that goes by the name “The Butcher”. He brings his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to fictional Taylor Swift-level global superstar Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan) concert which turns out to be a trap for him — and this is inspired by a wild, real-life sting operation.
Shyamalan’s ensembles tend to be a motley crew of characters and actors for that matter that all play well with each other and it shows. He always makes room for quirky weird characters that blatantly bolster exposition in a fun way. In Trap, there’s Allison Pill who acts the fuck out of that role in the minimal time she is on that screen as Cooper’s wife; the souvenir salesman Jamie (Jonathan Langdon kills it) who tells us everything we need to know about why the police are there and who The Butcher is. Then there’s my favorite tertiary character of Jody’s Mom played with the best passive-aggressive “Karen” energy ever by Marnie McPhail.
Then there’s the fictional rapper named The Thinker played by Scott Mescudi a.k.a. Kid Cudi…
As soon as I saw that lace front enter the screen I knew EXACTLY what kind of character he was and it was giving this energy:
Shyamalan knows how to tell a story and assemble a bold cast to execute his vision. What happens after is either one of the two things: the audience collectively celebrates the brilliance of his ambitious storytelling or his name gets dragged through the mud. Audiences will either have a fun time with the world he created or they will dismiss it as silly and ridiculous — but you can’t deny that his films have movie theater-going appeal. And if you disagree, well, the $3 billion his movies have made at the box office tell a different story.
