EXT. SPOOKY MINING TOWN - DUSK
Handsome Dude sees a CRAZY OLD MAN walking down the road and pulls his car up alongside him.

OLD MAN
Oh, no sir. There's no place like that around here.

UNDERAGE HOTTIE
What about the abandoned silver mine?

HANDSOME DUDE
That's right. That sounds groovy!

OLD MAN
No, no! You don't want to go in there, kids.

HANDSOME DUDE
Well, why the heck not?

OLD MAN
Listen to me, it's too dangerous!

HANDSOME DUDE
Dangerous? But we're young and attractive.

UNDERAGE HOTTIE
Everyone knows you can't get pregnant if you're both drunk.

OLD MAN
No, it's the mine itself!

HANDSOME DUDE
What, are there ankle biters in there?

OLD MAN
Much worse! You see, the abandoned silver mine is cursed.

HANDSOME DUDE
What?

UNDERAGE HOTTIE
Cursed?

OLD MAN
That's right. It's . . .
(beat)
The Curse of M. Night Shyamalan!!!!!

No, no, this isn't that Sci-Fi Channel special from a couple of years ago, the one that turned out to be totally bogus and a deceiving ad for The Village. This is something very different.
Watch out, boys and girls. The Curse is out there, right now. And closer than you think.
The Curse of M. Night Shyamalan is this: in today's market, many filmmakers feel they must include a mind-blowing twist or surprise at the end of their Horror, Action, Sci-Fi, or Suspense film. The Curse prevents them from remembering that people loved The Sixth Sense for its acting, its scares, its great writing, its subtle direction, and emotional depth. The Curse narrows their perspective to the surprise ending alone and encourages them to insert one in their own projects, even if it's illogical or incongrous to the story as a whole.
It's not that these filmmakers are stupid (many of the twists they come up with are quite clever) or blind (indeed, I always say that the most important part of a horror movie is its ending), they're just sick. Sick with a curse they have limited control over.
Tyranist and I saw The Sixth Sense on Saturday, August 7th, 1999. I saw it because it was a Bruce Willis film primarily, and Horror secondarily, with very few expectations. Both of us were so floored, moved, scared, and amazed by it, however, that we neglected to do our typtical after-movie Skulls and reviews on the film. Not long afterward, the movie became something of a phenomenon, attracting larger and larger audiences, and earning more than any horror film, from The Exorcist to Halloween, Jaws to Scream, had ever done. "I see dead people" became a sensation, first as a catchphrase, then as a tacky punchline. All anyone could talk about was the surprise ending--did you see it coming? Did it make sense? Did the boy know from the beginning? Should I see it a second time? How did he talk to his wife then? Didn't he change his clothes throughout? Was he wearing a toupee?--and as the box office carried over into the video rentals and DVD receipts, the Curse was born.
Not to take anything from M. Night as a writer or director--I recently saw Signs again and the scene where Joaquin Phoenix explains why he believed in miracles was genius, pure and simple--but the Curse has affected him as well. Sure, we didn't know what to expect from Unbreakable, so when the huge twist arrives at the end of the film, it still shocks and astounds us. Indeed, many folks I've spoken to consider Unbreakable, not Sixth Sense to be the superior film in the Shyamalan oeuvre, but its ending is what people talked about and what people remember. Next came Signs, with its multiple reversals. While still a fantastic film, this one was more polarizing, with some folks decrying the film ("I knew Mel Gibson's kid would turn out to be an alien about halfway through") as boring, anticlimatic, propagandist, and predictable pap. I disagree, but I didn't think anyone saw the film without anticipating a final twist of somesort. To me, Shyamalan's fifth film, The Village, was when it all came crashing down. Though well told and again, quite terrifying, people went into it trying to figure out the surprise before anyone else did ("I knew everyone in the town was a clone by the time the opening titles stopped running"). Shyamalan actually includes two twists--one about the monster and one about the village--but the lofty knowledge that a twist was coming distracted audiences and all but ruined the movie for me. The only worser knowledge was that Shyamalan would stick himself in the movie somewhere, a head-spinningly distracting habit he's somehow gotten into (made all the worse by his admission that he's not a good actor).
Shyamalan has hobbled himself by this . . . need to include a twist at the end of every film. While immensely talented, one gets the feeling he stays up nights coming up with a twist, then goes about the process of creating a story around that twist (Signs HAD to have been designed that way). Like Rod Serling--the previous generation's master of the shock ending--tiresomely constructing a concluding sentence to his monologues to include the name of the show, Shyamalan has handicapped himself by always having to have the big twist at the end. He's gifted enough to make a dozen completely satisfying movies with no twists in the final reel, but audiences are going to expect it now--like Arnold Swartzenegger with the old "I'll be back," or Hitchcock with his own cameos, or The Rock with that insipid eyebrow thing--and feel somehow cheated or let down if that twist doesn't come.
We'll see how Lady In the Water fares later this year ("I knew before the movie even came out that the lady in the water was really Paul Giamotti's father").
But if Shyamalan has hurt himself with these outlandish surprise endings, the film industry at large has practically crippled itself with the Curse of M.N.S.. Starting in early 2000, film after film has come out with an attempt to duplicate the shock and seeming newness of The Sixth Sense's denoument. Flicks as varied as Hide & Seek, Dragonfly, Taking Lives, Scream 3, Identity, Decoys, The Forgotten, Imposter, Frailty, Saw, and High Tension have come out with illogical to ludicrously impossible endings. Even great films like The Others and Fight Club, Dracula 2000, and Hannibal seem affected by the Curse, though written long before Shyamalan came to town, since it's the twist that people focus on, like in the cases of The Crying Game or Soylent Green.
Heck, Ehren Kruger's entire career seems designed to be the poor man's M. Night, with only the recent Skeleton Key and 2002's The Ring holding any water.
Would some of these films still have gotten made, exactly as they are, if not for the Curse of M. Night Shyamalan? Certainly. The better ones, sure, and maybe even a crappy one or two. But many of them would never have reared their twisty heads if not for someone pitching, "It's like The Sixth Sense meets . . ." And how many films, such as Gothika or White Noise or Dark Water would have been very different (if made at all) had The Sixth Sense not made two hundred and ninety-four million dollars?
There have been twist endings on par with The Sixth Sense's in the Nineties (The Usual Suspects, Seven), the Eighties (Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp) the Seventies (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Don't Look Now, the Sixties (Planet of the Apes, Psycho) and beyond. But they never felt so obligatory (even "The Twilight Zone" didn't always end with a big twist, and when it did, the story was rarely about the twist) until The Sixth Sense and its spawn arrived on the scene.
I don't know if there's a way to break this curse. It may just take time and its power will fade. Or something new (and possibly worse?) might rise in the filmmaking consciousness to take its place. Certainly if M. Night himself can break the pattern (and I think it would take more than one successful twist ending-less film project to do that for him), it would work toward unraveling the Curse that has so many screenwriters and directors chained. I wish him luck with that.
I realise that I may be spinning my wheels here. There's nothing I can do about this problem. Even were I a big shot screenwriter or movie producer, the best I could do would be to keep my own movies Curse-free. Even then, it might be hard to ignore the nagging voices telling me "What if it's just a dream that he got away and he's really in a coffin somewhere?" or "Why can't the dog be the killer? I mean, nobody would see that coming!". And I'm not using this tired rant as an attack on Mr. Shyamalan, who I once proclaimed in 2003 to be the Steven Spielberg of the 21st Century. He is wealthy, successful, extraordinarily talented, and seems to be a really nice guy. Am I forgetting anything?
"You forgot cursed."
The Sixth Sense (1999)

R. Night Outfield
January 2006