M Night Shyamalan is back. In truth, he never went away but his latest film, Split – the 12th of his career – feels like a return to form, to the days of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs, when audiences flocked and critics applauded.
His films have grossed more than US$2.5 billion (Dh9bn) at the box office, and at one time the director – born in Mahé, India, and raised a Hindu in Pennsylvania after his parents moved to America – was hailed as the heir-apparent to Steven Spielberg.
But since the release of The Village in 2004, Shyamalan's status as one of Hollywood's most-exciting filmmakers has been gradually eroded.
“A colossal miscalculation” the late Roger Ebert wrote of the film, echoing the sentiments of many critics.
It was a comment that could just as easily be applied to his subsequent movies – Lady in the Water and The Happening, and bigger-budget missteps The Last Airbender, based on a Nickelodeon TV cartoon, and After Earth, a wretched sci-fi starring Will Smith and his son Jaden.
It was as if the Shyamalan magic of old had simply evaporated. He might point out that even in the face of poor reviews, his films made money.
Worldwide, The Last Airbender took $315 million, more than double its hefty budget. The widely derided thriller, The Happening (about a suicidal virus spread by plants annoyed by humanity's destruction of the planet), still grossed $163m against a budget of $48m. Even Lady in the Water clawed back its $70m budget – but only just.
As Shyamalan told me after the critical panning of that modern-day water-nymph fairy tale, critical apathy does not faze him, as he equates reviewers to schoolyard bullies.
“The point is to get up again,” he said. “As I’ve said, some fights are worth fighting for, even if you know you’re to lose it. The bully that bullies you only bullies you until you fight back once. You don’t have to win the fight. Bullies don’t want to really get into fights every day.”
It is an admirable stance, but Shyamalan's refusal to lie down left his films with increasingly meagre returns, far removed from the Oscar-nominated acclaim for 1999's The Sixth Sense, which helped make the phrase "I see dead people" part of the pop-culture lexicon. As J J Abrams became the real successor to Spielberg, Shyamalan floundered, artistically. So what went wrong?
To put it bluntly, he started to believe the hype. Unlike Abrams or Spielberg, who rarely take screenwriting credits, Shyamalan continued to write all his own projects without help. Overly reliant on twist endings, he began to look like a one-trick pony. Then there was his ill-advised move into family-friendly fantasy.
"I've always toyed with doing a Harry Potter," he told me before the release of The Last Airbender. "I've been offered all these fantasy movies and struggled over the decision of whether to do them or not."
That struggle was there for all to see on screen – poorly conceived films that failed to satisfy either children or adults. Thankfully, with Split, the 46-year-old Shyamalan has moved from fantasy, with a frugal $9m budget and his performance-driven script brought to life brilliantly by James McAvoy.
Ostensibly a kidnap drama, as three teenagers are abducted by McAvoy's bespectacled Dennis, Split morphs into something else as it emerges the kidnapper is just one of 23 personalities within the character's fractured mind.
Intriguingly, Shyamalan's return to form coincides with a partnership with Jason Blum, the producer behind low-budget hits, including Paranormal Activity and The Purge.
To some degree, Shyamalan aped Blum's business model with his previous film, 2015's found-footage movie The Visit – a $5m picture he wrote and directed that went on to make $98.5m at the box office.
While the reviews were mixed for the film, about two teenagers visiting their demonically possessed grandparents, Shyamalan's back-to-basics approach was heartening. Even before The Visit, Shyamalan seemed to be getting his groove back by executive producing and directing the pilot episode of a Twin Peaks-esque TV sci-fi drama, Wayward Pines, based on a series of books by Blake Crouch, in 2015.
He is also involved in a TV reboot of the HBO show, Tales from the Crypt, due this year.
It seems the discipline of low-budget filmmaking and serialised television has done him a world of good, as he leaves behind the bloated CGI and spiritual hokum of his recent big-budget flops.
Is he back on track? Maybe – and fans pining for the Shyamalan of old might yet get what they wish for. The almost obligatory twist in Split – we won't spoil it here – reveals it is set in the same fictional universe as one of his most acclaimed movies. This is a bold move – and one that hints at a future sequel/mash-up.
A “Shyamalan universe” to rival those of Marvel and DC? Suddenly he is thinking like a Hollywood filmmaker again.
• Split will be in cinemas from Thursday, February 2
artslife@thenational.ae
