M. Night Shyamalan Scares Me

by Johnny Mehta

I remember when I first saw the Sixth Sense. That movie scared the crap out of me. I was with my girlfriend Ashley at the time; I held her hand so tightly that I almost broke her fingers. Between that and me wimpering  like a school girl during the scene where the ghost throws up in Cole Sear’s tent, Ashley couldn’t take it anymore. She dumped me two days later.
It wasn’t exactly the ghosts in the movie that scared me. Sure, they were creepy, but it was the 2 minutes leading up to the ghosts that were the most unnerving– the room going cold, Cole freaking out, his dog whimpering, the sinister music in the background… Shyamalan created a mood and terror I’ve only felt once before – when I was thinking about introducing my white girlfriend to my parents.

Lately, I’ve felt that same fear in between Shyamalan movies; it usually starts the  moment the trailers for his upcoming movie begin. I sit there and feel chills run up and down my spine and await in terror wondering what M’s Unbreakable imagination will serve up the American public next.

Take Lady in the Water – it was just damn frightening to think about whether anyone was really going to drop $10 to watch a movie about a building manager helping out a water fairy. That’s when I cowered under the covers and said to myself “I see confused people!”
M is a master story teller. He uses his imaginative stories as vehicles for expressing all the things on his mind – like having faith in yourself, believing in the unbelievable, being a superhero, or other things like what it would be like to live in isolation in some nature preserve in Pennsylvania, or getting help from a Narf of the Blue World to tell movie critics to go screw themselves.

On the surface, M’s movies may be about the supernatural or mystical. But dig a little deeper and they’re autobiographical. He’s an ABCD who relied on the faith he had in himself to get past the folks unconvinced that he could be successful doing something other than being a Doctor. The frightening plot twist for all ABCD parents out there was that he actually decides on film school instead of medical school and ends up being a multi-millionaire film director. To ABCDs attempting a non-traditional path (like a third-rate comedy website), he becomes a superhero.

Along such a non-traditional journey, everybody’s got lessons to learn. Like the difference between a plot twist that'll leave folks surprised and amazed (Sixth Sense) versus one that leaves folks bemused an embarrassed (the Village). Also, using your kids as consultants for story ideas doesn't always work either.

But who am I to say anything? M. Night is still one of the finest directors out there and his critics need to keep in mind he's the first ABCD to go where no ABCD has ever gone before. Sometimes a guys gotta screw up to get things right.

That said, I just wish he could give me another movie that would scare my pants off, just like he did in the Sixth Sense. And one without Narfs.