M. Night Shyamalan
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Psycho (1960)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
influenced Split (2017), Signs (2002), The Visit (2015), Glass (2019)
Visuals Characters
The film looks spectacular, full of Hitchcockian homages that remind one of Vertigo and Psycho, to name only a few.
It’s a number that substantially ups the game on earlier horror incarnations of the disorder such as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho , the latter of which gets several obvious references throughout.
He’s obviously and respectfully nodding to silken, scary movie predecessors played by Anthony Perkins in Psycho and Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, but he’s better here than he’s been since Atonement because he’s complex and oddly sympathetic—in addition to being a deeply creepy lunatic.
The film’s B-movie aesthetic is enhanced further by McAvoy’s confidently showy performance, which feels like an homage to Psycho’s Anthony Perkins and other actors who have played imbalanced bogeymen.
Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan reminds everyone why folks used to associate him with Alfred Hitchcock, swiping a mental condition from Psycho, a sympathetic shrink from Spellbound, and a bold theorist from Rope.
Shyamalan has never bothered hiding his adoration of Hitchcock, and in Split, the references start with the movie’s Psycho-inspired title sequence.
Nope (2022)
Directed by Jordan Peele
influenced by Signs (2002), The Sixth Sense (1999), The Village (2004), The Happening (2008), Unbreakable (2000), Lady in the Water (2006), Split (2017)
Themes Plot Visuals
Shyamalan has never been the same, creatively speaking, even if he occasionally teases a return to form a la 2016’s “Split.”
The film it most resembles may be M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs," in which horror also was initiated by an alien presence, but what it really reminded me of, in the way it combines spectacle and emotional investment, is Steven Spielberg at his best.
OJ, who is played by Daniel Kaluuya with the guarded poise of a great Western star, will ride his horse and lure out the craft in a sequence that can be ranked with anything by J.J. Abrams or early M. Night Shyamalan, whose “Signs” is another movie we can reference here.
Yet watching the movie, you can just about taste the DNA of Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and “Nope” mirrors the trajectory of other films that have been made in the shadow of “Close Encounters,” like M. Night Shyamalan’s “Signs” and Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival.”
While Nope takes a Spielberg-like approach to its alien-encounter story, full of teasing moments punctuated by cathartic, cinematic spectacle, it also channels M. Night Shyamalan’s polarizing 2002 extraterrestrial-horror film Signs at times.
The isolated, desert milieu at times brings to mind the waiting game played by Mel Gibson’s family in M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs .
Think Night of the Living Dead, only less creepy.
Like Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense, Signs takes place in Pennsylvania (my home state, incidentally), and in what seems to be the film�s most explicit homage to someone besides Hitchcock, the movie adopts, in its second half, the setup of George Romero�s classic horror film Night of the Living Dead, which was set outside Pittsburgh.
Even at the end of the film, after a blatant "Night of the Living Dead" rip-off, when he must deliver the goods, Mr. Shyamalan wisely opts for implication and reflection instead of gratuitous effects.
By leaving most of the menace to the imagination--and by borrowing from classics like "Night of the Living Dead" and "War of the Worlds"--he ratchets up the tension to nearly unbearable levels.
Shyamalan cites Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Birds, and Night of the Living Dead as his inspirations for the way he wanted Signs to feel.
Before you can say "duck and cover," Shyamalan is rolling in the paranoia of "The War of the Worlds," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "The Birds," "Night of the Living Dead" and the full spectrum of 1950s sci-fi cinema.
The Birds (1963)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
influenced Signs (2002), Old (2021), Split (2017)
Dialogue Themes Visuals Plot
We shouldn’t say more about Split, because to appreciate the movie fully, one must not latch on to its purposely-disjointed narrative structure but rather immerse themselves in the performances and stylishly expository dialogue, which often seems like padding, but really is just a salute to the same sort of talky devices Hitchcock often used (think of the chatty old lady in The Birds, or the final 10 minutes of psychobabble in Psycho).
All in all, though not loud visually or in audio, not a dull moment, and a rather fine arc of suspense building up to the climax Citing "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," "The Birds" and "Night of the Living Dead" as inspirations for the feel of "Signs," Shyamalan says, "I definitely feel akin to older filmmaking than today's filmmaking."
Shyamalan borrows from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" for a scene in which the Hess family is huddled in the sealed-up house while frightful noises come from every direction.
Shyamalan cites Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Birds, and Night of the Living Dead as his inspirations for the way he wanted Signs to feel.
It's the spirit of "The Birds," which arrived 40 years ago and still looks fresh today.
The situation is similar to Hitchcock's "The Birds."
Although it is publicly documented that Malerman completed the novel’s rough draft before the release of M. Night Shamalyan’s “The Happening” and the cinematic adaptation of “The Road,” the comparisons to both of these films, and any given post-apocalyptic movie released in the past several decades, cannot help but be drawn regardless.
Adapted from the 2014 post-apocalyptic novel of the same name by Josh Malerman, Bird Box is oddly similar to filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan’s terrible 2008 thriller The Happening.
We’ve seen this kind of post-apocalyptic tale before, and there are bits and pieces that will remind you of The Happening, The Road and A Quiet Place.
The mysterious, invisible force driving people to suicide recalls M. Night Shyamalan’s much-maligned The Happening .
Here, as in M. Night Shyamalan’s far worse “The Happening,” is a movie that deals with two simultaneous fears at once.
If you’ve seen any film where a mismatched group of survivors has to band together to understand and survive an unpredictable and ever growing extinction level event – from Night of the Living Dead to The Mist to The Happening to A Quiet Place – you’ll know every single thing that happens in Bird Box from the moment the plot kicks into gear, and no amount of great direction or nuanced performances will distract from the fact that this has all been done so many times before that I’ve lost count, and that it has been done a whole lot better.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced Signs (2002), The Visit (2015)
Music Themes Visuals
While the film's score (by frequent Shyamalan collaborator James Newton Howard) ingeniously combines homages to Bernard Herrmann's themes for "Psycho" and John Williams' music for "E.T.," in these scenes Shyamalan employs no score, letting the exterior sounds and actors' strong performances work the audience's anxiety.
A hard-to-swallow spookfest cum religious parable, the film, which also recalls everything from "E.T.
"E.T." and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" are paid homage via a riderless swinging swing and mashed potatoes.
Visual motifs of the seventies and eighties have turned the century with him: His fascination with science and the myth of Pinocchio (from Close Encounters to AI), the men in spacesuits ready to arrest our spirits (Close Encounters to E.T. to Minority Report).
Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould make for credible kids who are clearly hurting from their family situation (their father left several years ago to be with a younger woman, a scenario that left similarly deep psychic wounds on adolescent Elliott in Spielberg’s E.T.) and are looking to make amends for both themselves and their mother.
While 30-year-old slacker Jeff spends his days huffing on a bong and repeatedly watching M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, looking for instructions from the cosmos among seemingly random events, brother Pat (Helms) tries to keep wife Linda (Judy Greer in her best role yet) content while he lives beyond their means.
Mom (Susan Sarandon) and her eldest son, Pat (Ed Helms), head off to their dreary jobs while youngest son, Jeff (Jason Segel), assumes his normal place on the ratty couch in his mother’s basement, where he beings his daily musings on the ramifications of destiny and fate as they relate to his favorite film, “Signs.”
Segel's Jeff has a spiritual way of looking at life that mostly revolves around his appreciation for M. Night Shyamalan's movie "Signs," and the idea that everything is connected.
Instead, the opening scene sets the stage for everything that follows, as Jeff dictates a long monologue into a recorder about the importance of the movie "Signs" in his life.
With little drive or motivation outside of smoking pot in the basement, Jeff is inspired by his favorite movie, M. Night Shyamalan's alien invasion thriller " Signs ," as he waits for a signal that will hopefully reveal his own fated destiny.
He's a go-nowhere, do-nothing guy, preferring to smoke out and watch M. Night Shyamalan's Signs over and over.
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Directed by Daniel Myrick
influenced The Visit (2015), Signs (2002), The Village (2004)
Plot Themes Visuals
Indeed, it borrows liberally from SF-horror classic The War of the Worlds and strongly echoes such straight-up horror films as Prince of Darkness and Night of the Living Dead - even The Blair Witch Project .
Suffice to say that the film has "War of the Worlds" overtones, and that some moments recall both "The Blair Witch Project" and "The Others."
If you like low-tech, spooky fare such as “The Others” and to some extent “The Blair Witch Project,” the odds are you’ll like this one, too.
"Signs" exploits fear of the unknown better than any movie since "The Blair Witch Project."
The decision to frame the whole thing as found-footage, however, is a fundamental flaw; not only is it a tired concept (the pinnacle of the sub-genre, The Blair Witch Project , was released in the same year as The Sixth Sense ) but it also fatally constricts both the narrative and the action.
Her handheld footage (thankfully, not all of the shaky-cam variety) is one of the director’s many nods to genre classics from “The Blair Witch Project” to “The Exorcist” to “Paranormal Activity.”
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced Signs (2002)
Visuals Themes
Letting the viewer's imagination do most of the work for him, Shyamalan creates some terrifically tense and taut moments that should remind viewers of the similarly classic scenes from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
"E.T." and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" are paid homage via a riderless swinging swing and mashed potatoes.
Its antecedents -- Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, and, surprise!, Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind -- are obvious almost immediately, but Shyamalan's personal style, which falls somewhere between the hyper-surreal world of David Lynch and the bland normalcy of Leave It to Beaver is his all his own.
And if they do attack, are we prepared to fight them and still come away with our lives?Before you can say "duck and cover," Shyamalan is rolling in the paranoia of "The War of the Worlds," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "The Birds," "Night of the Living Dead" and the full spectrum of 1950s sci-fi cinema.
Newsweek has already declared him... "The Next Spielberg" ...which is clearly Shyamalan's ambition, but this film's idea on faith is like a simplistic version of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The Watchers (2024)
Directed by Ishana Night Shyamalan
influenced by Unbreakable (2000), Signs (2002), Split (2017), The Visit (2015)
Plot
And, like almost any Shyamalan film after Signs and before Split, the folklore horror film is ambitious to the hilt but never quite reaches the full ambit of its genre.
Now that The Sixth Sense writer/director's daughter Ishana Night Shyamalan is following in his footsteps by making her first feature, decades of that viewer training across Unbreakable, Signs, The Visit, Split, Glass and more laps at The Watchers' feet.
Mina (Dakota Fanning) appears to be sleepwalking through her life, numb with some combination of ennui and grief, not unlike the Bruce Willis character in Unbreakable; she winds up lost in mysterious woods that may be populated by monsters, not unlike the environment depicted in The Village; and wakes up in a small building trapped with a small group of strangers, not unlike the spartan set-ups for Split or Knock at the Cabin.
Now that The Sixth Sense writer/director's daughter Ishana Night Shyamalan is following in his footsteps by making her first feature, decades of that viewer training across Unbreakable, Signs, The Visit, Split, Glass and more laps at The Watchers' feet.
From the jaw-dropping The Sixth Sense to the all-consuming Unbreakable to the spine-tingling Signs, we took Shyamalan’s name for granted.
And, like almost any Shyamalan film after Signs and before Split, the folklore horror film is ambitious to the hilt but never quite reaches the full ambit of its genre.
The Ring (2002)
Directed by Gore Verbinski
influenced by The Sixth Sense (1999)
Characters Visuals Themes
Likewise, the young actor playing her son (David Dorfman) is extremely effective and though his preternatural ability to see things he really shouldn't be able to is perhaps too reminiscent of Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense, he is nonetheless a suitably creepy addition to the story.
This Westernized, subtitle-free version comprises a pastiche of horror hooks, from pretty, petrified teens (lifted from any slasher epic or Don't Say a Word) to the standard creepy moppet (via The Shining and The Sixth Sense) to boob-tube bogeys (à la Videodrome and Poltergeist) to some good ol' family fun akin to that of V.C. Andrews (Flowers in the Attic).
Verbinski didn't need to steal imagery from any other movie than the one he was remaking, but nonetheless references to films such as "The Sixth Sense" and "Psycho" serve only to distance the audience.
One is reminded of "The Sixth Sense" and "The Others," particularly in the sense that, like those films, "The Ring" always seems to have more on its mind than its surface-level ghost story.
It’s a slippery, murky, gray-green film, full of borrowings from “Twin Peaks,” “The Sixth Sense,” “Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Poltergeist” and who knows what-all else.
In her race against time to solve the mystery behind "The Ring" (and please don't expect me to specify what 'The Ring' actually is), Rachel enlists the help of not only her longtime friend and colleague Noah (Martin Henderson), but also her young son Aidan (David Dorfman), who, like the Hayley Joel Osment role in "The Sixth Sense" and the little girl in "Stir of Echoes," seems to have a gift for communicating with those in a different plane of existence, although he really doesn't want anyone to think so.
The Shining (1980)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced Split (2017), The Village (2004), Unbreakable (2000)
Characters Plot
At the same time, a lot of what is going on with Dr. Fletcher turns out to be a massive red herring, almost as if Shyamalan is channeling his inner Stephen King treating her much in the same way that iconic horror author dealt Sheriff Buster in Misery or Overlook Hotel chef Halloran in The Shining .
It wouldn’t be fair to reveal how Shyamalan works out this scenario, but one can say that he ties together Kevin’s story with Casey’s past in a fairly canny fashion, and that the narrative borrows some of its beats from “Psycho” and “The Shining,” among other pictures, along the way.
In short, McAvoy's work here should go into the annals of great psycho performances alongside Anthony Perkins in Psycho, Jack Nicholson in The Shining and Kathy Bates in Misery.
The Sixth Sense had a marvelous creepy intimacy, but forgive me for pointing out that its plot, a cross between The Shining and Ghost, was mostly smoke and mirrors (wouldn't Bruce Willis have tried, at least once, to have a conversation with somebody other than his wife and Haley Joel Osment?).
That may well be true but if I had to compare his films to Kings books, then "The Sixth Sense" is "Carrie", "Unbreakable" is "The Shining" and "The Village" is "The Tommyknockers".
If you are reminded of “Psycho,” “The Three Faces of Eve,” Shyamalan’s own “Unbreakable” and the overrated “10 Cloverfield Lane,” it’s for good reason.
“Multiple personality disorder” has been a favorite Hollywood disease since Joanne Woodward won an Oscar in 1958 for The Three Faces of Eve .
We’re a very long way from The Three Faces of Eve, baby.
I mean, it's certainly equal to multiple-personality interpretations by Joanne Woodward ("The Three Faces of Eve") and Sally Field ("Sybil"), and each of them walked away with Best Actress Oscar and Emmy statues, respectively.
More pseudo-thriller than psycho-thriller, “Split” is like “The Three Faces of Eve” (or “Sybil”) meets “The Silence of the Lambs.”
The NeverEnding Story (1984)
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
influenced The Last Airbender (2010)
Characters Themes
This means doing a lot of traveling, so it helps that Aang has with him a giant, friendly, furry, flying beast (think here of "The NeverEnding Story").
He and his “sky bison,” a giant flying creature that looks like a cross between the Luck Dragon of The NeverEnding Story (1984) and one of Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things, became trapped under the ice of the northern territory and were freed by Katara (Nicola Peltz), a young woman of the Water Tribe who is also a nascent bender, and her older and very protective brother Sokka (Jackson Rathbone).
Much-loved characters from the animated series are brought to life, including the monkey Momo and a flying bison named Appa (who looks terrific but is a little too reminiscent of the luckdragon Falcor from Wolfgang Petersen’s The NeverEnding Story, 1984).
Filmed in 2-D with 3-D applied after the fact - with marginal results - its muddled mythology is a patchwork of influences, from "Compass," "The Chronicles of Narnia," "The Lord of The Rings" and "The Neverending Story" to, of all things, the Dalai Lama parables "Little Buddha" and "Kundun."
Don’t Worry Darling draws parallels to The Stepford Wives , The Truman Show , The Matrix , The Village , Inception , Antebellum , WandaVision , and virtually every episode of The Twilight Zone .
A friend of mine has compared it to M. Nigh Shyamalan’s “The Village,” and I don’t blame him.
En No te Preocupes, Cariño colisionan un paupérrimo guión de Katie Silberman, en base a una historia de Carey Van Dyke y Shane Van Dyke, con una dirección aceptable de parte de Olivia Wilde, que si bien le agrega tensión, vertiginosidad, suspenso y profundidad estética a una trama llena de puntos muertos y cabos sueltos, también arrastra malas decisiones y adolece de un final pobre, el cual intenta recuperar infructuosamente lo mejor de The Truman Show (1998), de Peter Weir, The Matrix (1999), de los hermanos Wachowski, e Inception (2010), de Christopher Nolan, pero termina copiando sin demasiado éxito ni disimulo a The Village (2004), de M. Night Shyamalan, y sobre todo The Stephford Wives (1975), la película de Bryan Forbes con guión de William Goldman basada en la novela de Ira Levin de principios de la década del setenta, que tuvo una pobre remake en 2004 dirigida por Frank Oz.
Speaking of the derivative aspects of The Village, you'd be better off watching Don't Look Now (1973), The Blair Witch Project (1999) and any episode of The Twilight Zone, chased by a Fantasy Island.
The first sight of one of the red cloaked wood creatures recalls the dwarf of Nicolas Roeg's "Don't Look Now" and one characters death tableau evokes St. George's slain dragon as imagined by Maurice Sendak.
The Babadook (2014)
Directed by Jennifer Kent
influenced by The Sixth Sense (1999)
Visuals Themes Characters
There are many other echoes of screen horror here: clips of Maria Bava’s Black Sabbath; portents of domestic madness in the mode of Polanski’s Repulsion; a general sense of claustrophobia that’s more than a little reminiscent of The Exorcist; a use of grey paint and an overall color-leeched palette to rival The Sixth Sense; and as female-centric psychological horror, it also recalls the evocation of shadow-steeped nocturnal anxiety so chillingly staged in Robert Wise’s The Haunting (63).
Look past the horror trope of the Satanic or disturbed little boy seen in The Omen, The Ring, and The Sixth Sense, and you'll find a child struggling to deal with the loss of a father he never knew, and Amelia's subsequent, deeply buried resentment toward him—in a completely normal way .
Wiseman didn't get the memo because he is Davis' equal in every scene here and is living the part rather than saying his lines - Harvey Stephens in The Omen and Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense have some serious competition.
Maybe M. Night Shyamalan is due some cash, because "Ghost Town" is essentially "The Sixth Sense" with the hilarious British misanthrope from the original version of "The Office" and "Extras," whose catchphrase would be "I see dead people, and I wish I could serve them all with restraining orders."
Gagging on elements of Ghost and The Sixth Sense, the film finds Pincus dogged at every step by spirits with unfinished business on Earth.
His directorial efforts, The Trigger Effect and Secret Window had their share of attributes but neither stood a candle to his underrated Stir of Echoes, which was the ghost story everyone should have seen in 1999 instead of The Sixth Sense.
It also owes a bit to a much more recent—and more serious-minded—work, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999).
Pincus maintains a tightly controlled world of solitude, until he goes in for a routine colonoscopy only to emerge with a parodied version of "The Sixth Sense."
During the opening minutes of the film—an occasionally effective mash-up of Ghost, The Sixth Sense, and The Frighteners—Gervais is nearly mute as Bertram Pincus, D.D.S. , a dentist who enjoys his work because it allows him the peace and quiet that comes with sticking cotton balls into his patients' mouths.
Knowing (2009)
Directed by Alex Proyas
influenced Knock at the Cabin (2023), Signs (2002), Split (2017), Lady in the Water (2006), The Happening (2008)
Themes Plot
One sign of Shyamalan’s success is that other people started making M. Night Shyamalan-type movies: Joel Schumacher with The Number 23, Alex Proyas with Knowing.
It’s weird, traumatic, and violent, borrowing ideas from “Knowing,” “10 Cloverfield Lane,” and “The Mist” as it explores thought-provoking themes of destruction, salvation, and sacrifice.
A surprising film this reminded me of was Alex Proyas’s “Knowing,” which also used visions and premonitions to build an apocalyptic narrative.
As something deeper that attempts to touch upon religion, faith, and destiny vs. coincidence, it comes off as a less genuine thematic cousin to 2002's " Signs " that hasn't quite figured out what it wants to say.
This reading is based largely on a single scene in which Koestler presents exactly that question to his students, before collapsing in a depressive fit (like Mel Gibson in Signs , Koestler suffered an incredible crisis in faith when his wife died in an apparent accident).
The plot, too, is a sham (shades of Signs and Close Encounters), and Proyas's slick visuals do little to dress it up.
It’s here that Perkins rises above merely paying homage to the aforementioned ’90s horror films and channels another one to which he’s more indirectly indebted: M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense. The twist in Longlegs, though, exists more at a thematic level than as a plot point. Perkins slowly and slyly adjusts the stakes of the film until they become unmistakably different from where they began.