M Night Shyamalan’s set to pay us a ‘visit’ in theatres. If the trailers are anything to go by, The Visit looks far more promising than his last few films that made us all wonder - what happened to the man who gave us The Sixth Sense? It’s a question whose answer is best known to the one who churns the creative wheel up there but if he is indeed back in form, it is good news for all. Psychological thrillers with strong stories, character-centric plots and an aversion to gore and cheap scares are rare and Shyamalan, at one point, was quite a flag-bearer of the middle-range horror films that worked on their narrative strength.
Shyamalan’s early life and debut is a prototype of a passionate and innately gifted film-maker. His interest in cinema rose when he was given a Super 8 camera at a very young age. The prolific kid had, by the age of 17 made close to 50 home movies and by the age of 29 debuted with The Sixth Sense, a film much loved by the audience and critics alike. This Bruce Willis starrer went onto grab 6 Oscar nominations instantly putting a young Shyamalan on the marquee for directors to watch out for.
Shyamalan’s strength has always been telling character-driven stories of flawed people confronted with supernatural phenomena. His stories look at the paranormal from a spiritual angle rather than the religious lens prevalent through the ages. It almost seems like he is trying to understand the other world through this one, through his characters and their destines, their problems, that sometimes seem trivial and simulated. In Signs, he has a troubled father, a Reverend struggling with loss of faith after the death of his wife. In The Village, inter-personal relationships are tested again. Unbreakable, perhaps is one of those few super-hero films that see the common man’s journey to super-heroism with more compassion and less bravado.
Within the paranormal activity bracket, Shyamalan has explored his craft dabbling with different genres from supernatural horror (Sixth Sense), to psychological thriller (Village) to fantasy thriller (Lady in the Water) to sci-fi adventure (Signs and After Earth). With the ‘The Visit’ he returns to tested territory of the horror film.
For all the careful characterisations and motivations, a Shyamalan film is nothing if not for the ‘surprise’- the big bang which is more like a hair-pin bend than a blast. The Visit’s twist in the plot is laid out, something is fishy with Nana and Pop Pop and we don’t know what. Young children’s lives are at stake and for their sake the mystery of mysterious grandparents has got to be solved.
Unlike most Shyamalan films, this one seems to have straight-up, scream-out-loud scares, the studied silences, the breathless suspense and the tense play of anxiety and unease seems to have been replaced by a more action-packed narrative suggesting more and sharper turns than we are used to in his films. And as some reviews suggest, it seems to be working.
Is the Manoj Night Shyamalan we used to know, back? For the sake of our ready-to-spill popcorn and Cokes, let’s hope yes.
(Fatema Kagalwala is a 2nd year Film Editing student at FTII)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)