Samuel L Jackson names his favourite M Night Shyamalan film: “It’s a great fucking movie”
The best thing M Night Shyamalan did was seek to discover whether or not he could direct a blockbuster, which might come across as oxymoronic, considering the two big-budget, effects-heavy movies he helmed were so bad they almost ruined his career.
Most people would look at the smouldering wreckage left behind by the five-time Razzie-winning fantasy The Last Airbender and the three-time Razzie-winning Will Smith vanity project After Earth and be left in a state of despair and panic, but it was the kick up the arse Shyamalan needed to get back to doing what he does better than most.
In fairness, the former wunderkind’s shine had already come off by that point after The Village, Lady in the Water, and The Happening saw his signature tropes run out of gas and effectiveness, but reaching the bottom of the barrel was the perfect tonic to re-energise and revitalise his stagnant creative juices.
These days, Shyamalan crafts solid-if-unspectacular B-movies and funds them himself before selling them to distributors, and all of them turn a profit, an economical model that’s led him to embrace his newfound status as the divisive face of commercially bulletproof original genre storytelling.
It’s not quite where he was predicted to end up in the immediate aftermath of The Sixth Sense or even in the wake of Unbreakable and Signs. The rain-soaked superhero story is held up by many as Shyamalan’s finest moment behind the camera, and star Samuel L Jackson would fully agree.
“They considered it a flop,” he lamented to Rolling Stone after Unbreakable earned significantly less money at the box office than Shyamalan’s breakout picture. “It’s kind of like people watching Pulp Fiction and then watching Jackie Brown and saying, ‘Oh, well, that’s a flop’. No, it’s a great fucking movie. It’s just not Pulp Fiction. So, Unbreakable did quite well, and it’s done well over the years.”
Jackson couldn’t even remember the name of The Sixth Sense, but he nonetheless compared the lasting legacy of Unbreakable to the supernatural thriller he could only refer to as “that fucking movie”. He’s of the opinion his first Shyamalan flick “has a bigger cult following than The Sixth Sense” once he was reminded of its name, doubling down on that belief.
“The majority of people,” he mused. “If you ask them what M Night Shyamalan’s best movie is, they’ll say Unbreakable.” There might be an element of bias, considering Jackson played the second lead opposite Bruce Willis, but it’s not like he’s pulling preposterous statements out of thin air.
If he were, then maybe he’d have named Glass, which would definitely be a ridiculous thing to say. Unbreakable still holds up, and the shoddy sequel only served as a reminder.
