YMMV / M. Night Shyamalan

• Audience-Alienating Era: From The Village (2004) to After Earth, he received very negative reviews and was widely considered to be a bad director, with The Last Airbender seen as the nadir of his career. This ended with Wayward Pines, after which he directed the critically acclaimed The Visit and Split.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • At the time of The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan didn't have his reputation, so nobody saw the film's Twist Ending coming. The problem came when Shyamalan started relying on twist endings in his films, a problem that first became apparent with Signs, generally considered the last film of his that's any good. By the time of The Village (2004), viewers had learned to see it coming, and his reputation and the quality of his films suffered for it.
  • Shyamalan's early films were characterized by slow pacing, restrained and unemotional acting, a greater emphasis on creating rarefied atmospheres, and dialogue that often felt unnatural. That worked since they were suspense and horror films. However when he was commissioned to direct The Last Airbender, a fantasy and adventure film based on a series that stands out for its humor and spectacular fights, those features became serious defects.

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