With the release of his newest movie Glass last month, M. Night Shyamalan’s name has once again come back to the media’s view, but this also puts a spotlight on his past work and how he got to where he is now. M. Night was born on August 6, 1970, in Puducherry, India; however, he grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From a young age, Shyamalan had a passion for creating and directing films, but what put his name on the map was the release of his smash hit, The Sixth Sense released in 1999. Starring Haley Joel Osment and Bruce Willis, this movie was a massive success, clocking in 672.8 million USD in the box office. Naturally, this drew mass amounts of praise because of its masterful writing and a genuinely shocking twist ending to surprise the unexpecting viewer. M. Night made a name for himself with the success of this movie and would go on to make another classic, Unbreakable, once again starring Bruce Willis as well as  Samuel L. Jackson. This movie was well received by many people; however, it did show signs of M. Night’s development of cliches that he would later fall back on.

 Then M. Night released the movie Signs, and this is what most point to in regards to his decline of greatness. Signs overall was seen as a lesser experience compared to his previous two smash hits, his noticeable tropes of poorly built suspense and strange twists began to really come to light. From here on M. Night continuously created less-than-stellar movies, like Lady in the Water, The Village, and the infamous The Happening. These are all prime examples of his rapid plummet from legend to laughing stock, with bad acting and convoluted, nonsensical stories, these movies are now viewed as comedies because of their laughable quality. It seemed like the more M. Night made movies the more apparent his lackluster skills became, or so that seemed to be the case until his movie Split came out in 2016. This movie was a drastic turn from his past failures like After Earth or Avatar: The Last Airbender it was actually somewhat well received and genuinely shocking to see him rise out of his ashes and produce something that people enjoyed. This brought on talk about M. Night and questioned if he was coming back to reclaim his title; then Glass released in January of 2019 as a continuation of both Unbreakable and Split as a crossover sequel. This movie was received with large amounts of criticism and confusion putting an end to any talk of M. Night and his recovery from his fall from greatness.

 M. Night is such an interesting director that many have questioned the validity of  his skill. Senior Jonathan Alvarez had this to say about Shyamalan’s directing: “No he’s definitely not a good director. I guess The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable were just beginner’s luck. After those films, he went over his head with making thriller films and they immediately tanked all his movies since then were commercial and critical failures.” This is probably the most commonly held opinion on M. Night, and he has not done much to disprove it to his past fans and critics. M. Night Shyamalan will forever be held to this idea because it is who he has come to be in the eyes of most. Was Split just a fluke, or does M. Night still have what made him a legend in the first place?