M. Night Shyamalan makes fear personal, giving frightened people time to be heard. We value that patience, especially in The Sixth Sense, but his stiff dialogue and plotting can undo a strong premise.
Fi1m perspective
In Trap (2024), Josh Hartnett’s Cooper counts the police at a pop concert while his daughter enjoys the show. Shyamalan gives us a man who must look ordinary while quietly working out how to escape, and Hartnett makes the effort funny and unnerving. For an hour, we are in capable hands. Keeping a story going after such a neat opening is where our confidence in Shyamalan begins to wobble.
The Sixth Sense (1999) was the breakthrough, with Unbreakable (2000) and Signs (2002) following it. The mixed and poor reviews came later, through films including The Happening (2008) and After Earth (2013). The Visit (2015) began the recovery. Split (2016) then kept a whole story close to one performance, a discipline we wish Trap had retained.
In The Sixth Sense, the person holding our attention is Haley Joel Osment’s Cole, a boy whose terror cannot be settled by adult reassurance. Shyamalan lets the psychologist’s attempt to understand him take time, and the silences make that effort feel necessary. We were moved by the seriousness with which the film treats Cole’s need to be believed. It sometimes pushes too hard for sympathy, and its solemn pace can drag, but the child remains more important than the next fright.
His fondness for doorways, reflections and carefully chosen colour asks us to look closely before deciding what we have seen. That visual care helps explain why his films can hold us even when the speech sounds unnatural. In Trap, the stiffness suits Cooper because his normality is already an act; the other characters gain rather less from it. The awkwardness becomes harder to overlook whenever Hartnett is off screen.
Trap also shows how readily he can forget the person keeping the film alive. Lady Raven performs songs in full, repeatedly, and the film keeps leaving Cooper to watch her. We lose interest in the stage before Shyamalan does. Hartnett gives him enough for a tight thriller, yet the film lets the story wander away from the performance. Start with The Sixth Sense, and give its silences a chance; approach Trap for Hartnett, with limited expectations of the writing.
Biography
M. Night Shyamalan is an American filmmaker, screenwriter and producer, also credited as Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan. He was born on 6 August 1970 in Mahé, India.
Shyamalan wrote, directed and produced the 2024 thriller Trap. His other films as director and writer include The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2000), Signs (2002), The Village (2004), Split (2017), Glass (2019) and Old (2021).
